An Effective CRM Starts with Implementation

A CRM can be a powerful tool for your business that will help your team be more successful. However, setting up a new CRM can be a big task to tackle and will have a huge impact on how effective your new instance will be for your team and overall business.

Are you satisfied with your CRM Implementation?

Based research looking at the Total Cost of Ownership of HubSpot vs. Salesforce, more than 80% of those that were satisfied with their implementation reported that their solution was extremely effective at helping them achieve strategic goals.

Meanwhile, only 22% who weren’t completely satisfied with their implementation reported it as extremely effective.

A new CRM is a significant investment for a business; having it be useful is extremely important. With how much of an impact implementation has on the overall effectiveness of the CRM for your business you’ll want to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

A huge part of this process is making sure that you pick the right CRM for your business. HubSpot users are more satisfied with the overall implementation process of their current CRM. Over half (51%) of HubSpot users surveyed report being extremely satisfied with the overall implementation process they experienced compared to 37% of Salesforce users reporting being extremely satisfied.

Implementation Challenges

Picking the CRM your business will be implementing isn’t going to be the only challenge you face.

Below we’ve put together a list of the top challenges that users reported during the implementation of their current CRM according to research looking at the Total Cost of Ownership of HubSpot vs. Salesforce.

Data Migration

45% of those surveyed, reported struggling with data migration. Migrating data is a huge undertaking. You’ll generally need to transform large amounts of data and check over everything with a fine comb to ensure you’re not importing dirty data into your new CRM. Moving so much data can be a complex and time-consuming process.

Cost of Implementation

42% of those surveyed, reported the cost of implementation as a top challenge while implementing a CRM. Implementing a new CRM can be costly. The tools themselves can be expensive and usually range from several hundred to thousands of dollars.

Time to Implement

40% of those surveyed, reported the that the time it took to implement was a big challenge. Implementing a new CRM can be costly.

CRMs require a lot of time to get set up so that they can be leveraged best by your business. This usually spans over the course of months and the time that goes into setting up this tool and learning how to use it is time you’re not doing other things for your business.

However, it is an investment that will pay for itself in the long run by helping business run more efficiently.

Training and Adoption

40% of those surveyed, reported the training and adoption of the implementation process was a huge challenge.

Having a new tool is great, but you’ll also need to ensure all of the people that will be using the CRM know how to use it and more importantly want to use it.

At the end of the day a CRM no one knows how to use or wants to use will not be very effective. To help ease this pain, some CRM companies will create documentation in a knowledge base, such as this example from HubSpot.

Ease of Use

37% of those surveyed, reported that the ease of use was a top challenge they encountered while implementing their current CRM.

Similar to training and adoption, you’ll want a tool that's easy to use. It’ll save you and your team time when it comes to onboarding everyone after the CRM is set up and will help with the overall adoption of the CRM in your business

Integration with Existing Tech Stacks

32% of those surveyed, reported that integrating their new CRM with other tools in their existing tech stack was a big challenge.

Most businesses don’t use one tool, they rely on a combination of tools that support various functions of their business.

But this can make it difficult to get all of the information in place, which is why a lot of companies will look at integrating their CRM with other tools in their tech stack to deliver a more streamlined process. Unfortunately not every CRM supports every tool and some integrations work better than others.

Effectiveness of External Resources & Vendors

27% of those surveyed, reported that integrating their new CRM with other tools in their existing tech stack was a big challenge.

Having access to quality vendors is an important thing to consider. It may be more effective to use a vendor partnered with your CRM to help implement and provide ongoing support.

Both CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce have a partner program with plenty of vendors that would be able to work on their respective CRMs.