CRM implementation
Enquiries stop getting lost
Set up around the company's processes rather than the other way round: an audit, the client base moved out of spreadsheets, telephony, mail and website forms connected, the team trained, and support after the launch. No tie to a single vendor — the system is chosen to fit the task.
- 25
- systems launched
- ERP
- in-house platform, built and maintained
- Spec and contract
- dates fixed before the start
The symptoms
When it is time
A base in spreadsheets
The clients live in Excel and Google Sheets, the files multiply, and which copy is current is something one person knows.
Requests without an answer
Enquiries arrive by phone, mail and messengers at once. Some go unanswered — and nobody knows which.
Missed calls
A missed call does not become a task to call back. It simply disappears — together with the customer.
History leaves with the manager
The correspondence and the agreements live in an employee's personal chats. One resignation — and the client is introduced to the company all over again.
Reporting by roll-call
How many enquiries came in this month and where they stalled is found out at a meeting, not by opening a report.
How the work runs
Seven steps in order
The audit
How enquiries arrive, how deals are run, where clients get lost. The result is the processes written down and the funnel the system is to reproduce. Redundant steps are cut before automation, not carried into it.
Choosing the system
The findings of the audit become a specification, and against it two or three systems are compared — with a test on real data before any licences are bought.
Configuration
The funnel, the card fields, access rights, automatic tasks. The system follows the company's processes — not the company adjusting to the logic of a program.
Moving the base
Clients and deals move out of spreadsheets and old systems with a check for duplicates. Nothing is lost and nothing is doubled.
Integrations
Telephony, website forms, mail, messengers, payments. Every enquiry lands in the system by itself — manual entry stays in the past.
Training
Each role gets its own instruction: deals for the manager, reports for the head. The team starts working in the system before the launch, not after it.
Support
The first weeks after the launch decide whether the system takes root: filling is watched, settings are adjusted, the team's questions get answers.
Integrations
Enquiries arrive on their own
Classes of services, with no tie to particular products.
Telephony
A call opens the client card, a missed one sets a task to call back, the recording stays with the deal.
Website forms
A form submission becomes a deal with its source attached — which ad brought it and what it cost is visible.
Mail and messengers
The correspondence is pulled into the client card. The history of the conversation belongs to the company, not to personal phones.
Payments and delivery
The status of the payment and the shipment shows right in the deal, with no separate accounts to log into.
Accounting and stock
Invoices and stock levels sync with the books — the manager does not visit a second program for every figure.
The price
What it is made of
Vendor licences
The subscription to the system itself. Paid to the vendor directly, at its own rates — with no margin and no commission added.
The implementation work
The audit, the configuration, the move of the base. The scope and the cost are fixed in the specification after the audit.
Integrations
Ready-made connectors are quick to attach. A link to a non-standard service through an API is development of its own, and it is priced on its own.
Training and aftercare
Instructions per role, the team brought up to speed, support through the first weeks. A cheap implementation usually saves exactly here — which is why it does not take root.
A figure before the audit would be an invention — which is why there is none here. After the audit the scope, the cost and the dates are fixed in the specification and the contract. A basic configuration takes from two weeks; the full cycle with integrations and training — from one to three months.
The traps
Why CRM gets abandoned
Installed, not implemented
The subscription is paid, the default funnel is left as it came — and this is called an implementation. Without being set up around the processes, a CRM soon becomes an expensive address book.
Automated chaos
If a process is not written down, the system will faithfully preserve the disorder. Which is why the work starts with an audit, not with the settings.
A team left untrained
The staff see surveillance in the system and keep running clients the old way — in notebooks and personal chats. Closed by training per role and support through the first weeks, when the questions are thickest.
Integrations by half
Half of the enquiries fall into the system on their own, half are typed in by hand. The manual half soon stops being typed — together with the point of the whole exercise.
Nobody in charge
A system without an owner fades in two or three months. A person responsible on the company's side is named before the launch — a condition of the work, not a wish.
The head outside the system
If the reports are still requested in a chat, the team draws its conclusions faster than any regulation. Working in the system starts with the head of the company.
Questions
Before you write in
Start
Fill in the brief
Telling what the business is and where the client base lives now is enough. The consultation costs nothing, and the answer names the system that would fit and what the price would be made of.