Michael Cross - Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant » Project Management http://michaelcrossconsultant.com Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to improve your relationships with customers and increase your sales and profits. Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:51:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Managing Risk in a CRM Implementation http://michaelcrossconsultant.com/2007/06/26/managing-risk-in-a-crm-implementation/ http://michaelcrossconsultant.com/2007/06/26/managing-risk-in-a-crm-implementation/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:08:57 +0000 admin http://michaelcrossconsultant.com/2007/06/26/managing-risk-in-a-crm-implementation/ In every Microsoft CRM implementation I have been involved in, there has been at least one item that I considered to be a risk (no surprises there).

The most common risk factors I’ve come across are:

  • Availability of qualified resources
  • Complexity of technical infrastructure and ensuring everything works
  • Complexity of functional requirements and impact on customizations, particularly custom programming
  • Third-party add-ons and utilities
  • Data migration
  • Systems integration

In the last project, two items ended up causing trouble.

The first was a third-party add-on that could not be installed correctly, or did not work 100% when it was installed. It took over two weeks and many hours of remote support sessions with the vendor, plus a patch to fix a bug, before it was working as expected.

The second was the technical infrastructure, particularly getting the outgoing e-mail to actually go out (solved by changing the SMTP settings), and getting the incoming e-mail to appear as activities in CRM (still a work in progress).

The lesson I learned? Identify as early as possible the risk factors and figure out how to mitigate those risks.

For example, don’t wait until the week before go live to install third-party add-ons, especially complex ones. Or if you think there is going to be a need for custom programming, then line up a programmer so they are ready when you need them.

Bottom line: Don’t sugarcoat the situation, and don’t make assumptions. Get into the details early and often, and you’ll be okay.

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