Step 1: Prepare, Plan, and Organize

Build your Team

Team members:

• Primary Stakeholder
• Project Manager
• Application Administrator
• Power User(s)

Note: In small businesses it is common that one person fill multiple or all roles.

Identify the Members who will hold these roles:

Define your Vision

Your vision statement should state the desired outcome for the project. Use these sample vision statements as an example to create your own vision statement:

“Use the application to more effectively track customer outreach and ROI on my marketing efforts to make better business decisions”

“Provide my customers with the highest level of support through the communication channels they prefer”

“Build and maintain better customer relationships by providing more personalized customer experiences”

Note: You may have more than one vision statement. We suggest you tackle each vision statement as separate phases of your implementation, with the help of the following exercises.

Define and Prioritize Goals

Before you define your business goals it is helpful to document the current pain points you need to alleviate.

Now, complete your own pain points table.

Once you have documented your pain points, define your goals and how you hope to alleviate those pain points.  Below is an example of defining your goals:

What do I hope to get out of Vantage CRM? Or, what do my users hope to get out of Vantage CRM?

• Ability to track prospective customers and track their source or how they found us
• Ability to communicate with my leads and my contacts using their preferred communication type
• Ability to analyze sale success to create a repeatable process for business
• Understand why/how business might have been lost

Now, take the opportunity to define your own goals. Note: Different types of users may have different goals. Document all user goals here.

Next, determine how you can quantify or achieve those goals. Here is an example using the example goals above:

• Capture Lead and Contact information automatically through:
  • Automate tracking of incoming and outbound phone calls
  • Enable Facebook Subscribe me app to collect and communicate with Facebook likers
  • Automate collection of prospect or customer information from my website
• Track prospective customers through the sales cycle by using the “Lead Source” field
  • Update lead source field to contain values of the channels we use to receive leads
  • Calculate the % of leads that led to more serious opportunities
• Reach out to my leads and contacts in a way that is convenient to the recipient
  • Set up email outgoing server settings and/or email archiving to track inbound and outbound emails
  • Set up MAX Voice integration to receive automated call activities
  • Agree to SMS and Mobile Verification feature usage plans to begin using SMS features
• Analyze sale success to create a repeatable process for business
  • All sales are entered into CRM for 100% visibility of revenue and tie to marketing efforts
  • Analyze communication efforts and their ROI
  • Calculate increase of business or close rate by %

• Understand why/how business might have been lost
  • Analyze time to close – how long the lead was in your pipeline
  • Compare number of leads converted and closed business month over month
  • Track deals lost to competitors to strategize and innovate new marketing strategies

Now, determine how you can measure your own goals:

Prioritize your Goals

Prioritize your goals in order of importance, or by “Must have” and “Nice to have” on a scale. Some priorities may fall in between. Tackle the Must haves first and then work your way down the list.

Here is an example of prioritizing your goals:

Define your Business Process(es)

Vantage CRM Business Process Questionnaire

1. Overall Data Tracking : Which of the following modules do you need to track data? (Please review glossary terms for reference in the Vantage CRM Implementation Guide)

         Leads – records you are prospecting

         Contacts – customer, partner, or vendor contacts

         Accounts – customer, partner, or vendor companies

         Opportunities – potential and closed sales opportunities

         Trouble Tickets – Service and Support requests

         Campaigns – Marketing Efforts

2. Lead/Contact Profiles : How do you currently segment or profile your customers?

         Industry

         Number of Employees

         Annual Revenue

         Source

         Location

         Other _______________

         We do not need to segment or profile customers

3. Contacts: What characteristics define the contacts that you interact with?

         Title

         Role

         Department

         Other: _______________

         We do not need to track contact or customer characteristics

4. Partners: Do you use Partners as sales channels? What is their role in uncovering potential sales?

         Value Added Resellers (VARs)

         Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)

         Referrals/Indirect

         Implementation/Installation

5. Opportunities/Sales : Do you currently track sale wins and losses? What opportunity properties are important to track?

         Sale Amount

         Expected Close (Date of Sale)

         Forecast Stage (confidence in closing)

         Sales Stage (level of activity)

         Product/Service

         Competitor

         Duration of Service

         Other _____________________________

6. Opportunities/Sales : Do you plan on forecasting your sales opportunities? If yes, select which standard values and % closing certainty you would use to forecast, or mark changes where applicable. *Closed Won, Closed Lost, and Omitted values are not able to be changed.

         Omitted – 0%     ________________________________________________________

         Pipeline – 30%     _______________________________________________________

         Best Case – 60%   _______________________________________________________

         Commit – 90%     ________________________________________________________

         Closed Won – 100%     ____________________________________________________

         Closed Lost – 0%     _______________________________________________________

7. Opportunities/Sales : Do you track your opportunities by sales stage or level of activity to close a sale? If yes, select the values below that you plan to use, or mark changes where applicable.

         Prospecting  ____________________________________________________________

         Qualification  ___________________________________________________________

         Needs Analysis  _________________________________________________________

         Value Proposition  _______________________________________________________

         Id. Decision Makers  ______________________________________________________

         Perception Analysis  ______________________________________________________

         Proposal/Price Quote  _____________________________________________________

         Negotiation/Review  ______________________________________________________

         Closed  _________________________________________________________________

8. Collateral and Marketing Materials : What materials do you most commonly send to customers during the sales process?

         Email templates

         PDFs

         Product/Service Menus and pricing

         Other: ____________________________

Business Process Overview and Diagram

Consider how your records are entered into VCRM. Do you enter records as leads for prospecting, or do you automatically start with customer contacts? If prospecting, when do you consider the lead a contact – when should you convert? What is your process for documenting your sales?

Here is an example of a sales process diagram.

* Please keep in mind that your process can be different or simpler than the process shown below. Each business is unique and will follow its own process. The diagram below depicts a process with very granular steps. We recommend that you consider each step in detail – ultimately it will enhance your VCRM experience.

Choose the fields you need to document your processes

Below is a list of standard fields in each module. Field values are listed where multiple values are offered in a pick list. You may also customize pick list values to better fit your needs.

Now that you have determined which fields you plan to use, consider whether or not you will need to customize the Menu and Module names across the application. Changes to menu and module names are made in the Module Organizer in the Admin Settings Module.

Next, mark the modules you intend to use and whether or not you will need to rename the module. When you make changes, keep in mind that renaming a module also changes the labeling of certain fields within the module. For example, if you change the Leads Module to be called Prospects, the Lead Source field will now read as Prospect source.

Determine which Reports you will Need

First, review your business goals. Using your business goals determine which standard or custom reports you will use or build to demonstrate your business goals. Below is a brief example of how to match your business goals to VCRM reports. In the event that a standard report does not contain all necessary information, you may modify standard reports or create new reports from scratch as outlined in the implementation guide.

Now, complete the table using the business goals you outline earlier.

Once you have created your list of reports, keep in mind that once you’ve begun Step 2 of the guide, Implementing VCRM, you can also build custom dashboards that will provide visuals of your data for review.

Step 2: Implementing VCRM

Customize your Site

Using the processes and field chart above to document planned field changes. First, turn off any fields you do not want to use in the Fields Access Module. Next, modify standard fields or create custom fields in the Custom Fields module based on the Processes and Field exercises completed earlier in the workbook. Then change Menu and Module names based on your needs.

Once you are through making changes to your fields, menus and modules, customize your field layout using the Layout Editor. Module records are displayed in two columns. If you plan to make large changes to your field layout, we recommend creating a sample layout in Excel to help you visualize the order of fields before you make changes.  Making changes from the bottom of the layout and moving up to the top is the easiest way to re-order your fields.

Create your Reports

Create reports according to the exercise above. Consider which fields will need to be displayed in order to show the information needed to demonstrate your business goals.

Import your Data

First list the sources that you currently use to keep or organize your data records. Sources can include: another CRM application, Outlook, Excel, Notes, etc.

Now, use the table below to document your data sources for import.

Review the Administrator Guide on Importing when you are ready to prepare files for import. All files need to be saved in CSV format for import to Vantage CRM.

The recommended order to import Records is

1. Leads
2. Accounts
3. Contacts and Opportunities

If you decide to use the Accounts module, it is important to import these records prior to importing your Contacts and Opportunities. Importing your Account records first, allows you to automatically establish a relationship with an account when importing your Contact and Opportunity records. If no Account exists, and the Account module has not been deactivated, importing Contacts and Opportunities before the Account records will generate a basic Account record (Account name only).  This can lead to duplicate Account records.

You may want to create your employee logins prior to importing if you already have designated record assignees. Creating your logins prior to importing will allow you to import records with a an assignment.

Step 3: Engage Your Employees

Get your employees excited to use VCRM. If you have more than one employee you may choose to delegate certain tasks within VCRM. For example one employee can follow up with your lead prospects, while another might be dedicated to creating and tracking marketing initiatives.

If you have more than one employee or are delegating specific tasks consider how you would like to focus training for their needs.

Measure Usage

After you go live with VCRM, you can start to measure usage. Document your procedure on how you would like to track usage metrics.

The easiest way to track usage is to use your reports and dashboards to check how many new records or activities were created during a given time period. 

Step 4: Expanding your Implementation

Using the workbook and guide revisit the exercises as needed to introduce additional VCRM functionality as needed.