Five Reasons Why CRM Implementations Fail and How Your Organization’s Implementation Can Succeed

No matter what products or services your organization provides—and no matter how large or small your market—your clients or customers are at the heart of your business. Choosing and implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is one of the most important business decisions you’ll make to keep that heart healthy. Yet, even with the time, care, and money that many companies spend to pick the right CRM, SalesForce reports that between 30% and 70% of these implementations end in failure. 

But your company can beat the odds by understanding the reasons for these failures, and then taking preventive steps starting from the beginning of your CRM selection process through the implementation and maintenance phases.

Reason #1: Lack of User Adoption

CRM users can decide not to adopt (or only halfheartedly adopt) a new platform due to a number of issues. These range from a lack of proper training, resistance to such a disruptive change, lack of perceived value, and the sheer complexity of a new system.

One of the most important measures to prevent user adoption issues is to designate knowledgeable, committed project sponsors and champions. These sponsors can include corporate users from the beginning of the process, where they are likely to be able to point out problems such as poorly designed user interfaces.

If your company has a CIO and/or a CTO, they can serve as experienced leads for the user adoption process all the way through to the maintenance phase. They can tout the value of the new implementation, including how it will benefit employees and customers alike in the long run. In the absence of a CIO or CTO, partnering with a technology advisor such as a fractional CIO will serve your company well in preventing a failed implementation due to user resistance.

Reason #2: Inadequate Planning and Requirements Gathering

New CRM implementations are sometimes undertaken due to urgent external events such as updated regulatory requirements or security breaches of an existing CRM. But when a new CRM is hastily chosen and installed in response to this level of stress, organizations often skimp on the detailed planning and requirements gathering that can help ensure a successful implementation. 

Lack of planning and research can lead to issues that can derail the success of the new CRM, such as poor (or no) requirements analysis, inadequate risk management, and underestimating the complexity of the implementation. However, a strong project lead (ideally an experienced technology leader within the company) can spearhead the requirements gathering process so that the results can help guide the implementation.

Reason #3: Poor Data Quality

The effectiveness of your CRM depends highly on the quality of your data. And your data is an invaluable asset that needs to be scrupulously checked and pruned to help you meet your customers’ needs. But in many organizations, data is incomplete, duplicated and fragmented across the corporate technology stack. Even the best-designed technology cannot function well under these circumstances.

Investing time and resources into cleaning and standardizing your data, as well as implementing strong data collection and maintenance processes, will save your company time and headaches in the future. To avoid re-creating old issues, this process should be factored into your implementation timeline and completed prior to migrating to a new CRM.

Reason #4: Lack of Integration with Other Systems

As emphasized in a recent Forbes article, “A CRM system reaches its full potential when it’s integrated with other applications and software.” Depending on the needs of your organization, the integration can mean linking your new CRM to one or two of your existing platforms, or it may require customized automations in order to seamlessly work with a complex set of software programs. 

Without proper integration, your organization may suffer from data silos (when data cannot be shared or updated between systems), technical challenges, and lack of accurate, real-time data that helps your customer-facing employees and executives alike make the best decisions for your customers and company.

When deciding which of the many modern CRMs will be best for your organization’s long-term needs, finding out about each CRMs integration capabilities will be a key factor in the successful use of the new platform in the long run. Your implementation team can create (or work with technology advisors who will build) a detailed testing plan to ensure that your new CRM can integrate with your e-commerce, marketing, customer service, and other platforms so that every department has access to the same data.

Reason #5: Insufficient Training and Support

After a new CRM implementation, frustrated employees often cite hurried and/or too few training sessions, inadequate training materials, little or no ongoing support, and other issues as reasons for not fully utilizing the new platform. This in turn can affect employee morale, productivity, and longevity.

Your company’s CRM implementation team can prevent poor user training on the system by choosing a user-friendly system with input from across your organization, vetting the trainers and materials furnished by your new CRM provider, and providing continuous training for new and existing employees.

The Foundation of a Successful CRM Implementation

The most important factors of a successful CRM implementation can be built into the plan from the beginning of the project. These include communicating a strong executive vision of the implementation’s goals, soliciting employee buy-in (which includes listening to concerns and taking feedback into account during the selection and implementation processes), and carefully tracking the process all the way through to the maintenance phase.

In future articles, we will be going into detail about the five reasons listed above for failed CRM implementations. This will help your company avoid these pitfalls and focus on the business goals you can achieve with the help of your digital transformation.