Designing your CRM system (Part 2) - An iterative, user-focused process

Design of your CRM system should evolve during the implementation process.  “Release early, release often” is a mantra of many open-source developers, and it turns out to help in many applications.  (I’ve heard of exactly one system that had no changes between initial design and final acceptance, and they spent four years in the design phase.  It was aerospace-related.)

If you can get a good suggestion from a user, implement it quickly, show them the result during the programming / testing phase, you’ll develop a feeling of “ownership” with that user.  When you have other glitches (and you will!), that goodwill will help you - they won’t be so quick to badmouth “their” system.  Keep the lowest-level users as involved as you can (their managers will resist, wanting them to keep doing their jobs, but it’s important).

And once the system starts coming together, users will be able to try it in increasing completeness.  In various implementations, in the few weeks before final testing I’ve done things like:

• Change field order on all main screens, and reworded all menus.  (This is common.)
• Remove 20% of the app (Adding 6 fields to another area let them drop 8 full screens.)
• Add a complex nested dropdown field that subsequently powered lots of their reporting.  During the design & implementation process, a manager had expressed “decreasingly vague” frustration with the design; after a series of meetings and fact-finding missions, it coalesced into needing this field added.  If she hadn’t seen all the earlier iterations, we never would have gotten to this point.

Users are smart - when you (finally) show them what they want, they’ll know it.

Of course you’ll need some more changes right after go-live, but that’s okay too.  Change is good - you're making the system and process better, removing friction and saving money.