Increasing CRM Usage

One of the best ways to increase CRM adoption is to ensure that the CRM is a vital aspect of how your users do their job. As in, they can’t do their job without it. It should be a natural part of your processes, not something extra to do. Here are a few ways you can better incorporate your CRM into your daily work interactions: 

  • Build a dashboard with KPIs for individuals/teams and review metrics during meetings straight from the dashboard 
  • Use Sugar Connect to log emails and view, create, and edit CRM information direct from the your Gmail or Outlook inbox.  
  • Link others to reports in CRM vs. downloading and sending a file 

What tips would you give to others to increase CRM usage?  

  • I think we need to plan Training as part of the CRM Implementation to improve adoption. Even though SugarCRM is easy to use, comprehensive training enables end users to use the usability features that they like or need. 

    Successful CRM Implementation needs Training as a strategy.

    Ram Kumar LK

    Sr Solution Architect

    https://www.bhea.com

  • Hi ,

    I definitely agree! Training cannot be overlooked. Often small things that frustrate users can be eliminated with some simple training. Ideally training should be ongoing as well. During a roll out there can be so much information coming at users all at once. Reinforcing that training over time is also critical to success. 

    Director, Customer Enablement | SugarCRM

  • Hi  ,

    One of the key element that we stress for CRM Adoption is refreshing the implementation every year. 

    When we implement a CRM for the first time there will be lot of challenges so however we try our best we may not be able to implement the complete feature set. But if companies look at "Refreshing their CRM Implementation" as an annual process the adoption continuously improves. 

    We have a blog on our website to elaborate this - 

    https://www.bhea.com/blog/refresh-your-crm-implementation-every-year/ 

    Many a times when we do a review of a CRM Implementation, every time we see additional benefits to end users by enabling some part of the CRM.

    Hope this helps. 

    Ram Kumar LK

    Sr Solution Architect

    https://www.bhea.com

  • Out of curiousity: How have you arranged the resources/support for the continuous training/functional support of CRM for users? 

    We have 30 organisations globally and during the development and implementation key users have been assigned. However after the implementation they don't seem to have the time next to day to day work to effectively support CRM and its users on a local level. 

  • Out of curiousity: How have you arranged the resources/support for the continuous training/functional support of CRM for users? 

    We have 30 organisations globally and during the development and implementation key users have been assigned. However after the implementation they don't seem to have the time next to day to day work to effectively support CRM and its users on a local level. 

  • Hi Arie, we can cover your questions in our next meeting. But briefly it is important to keep the users engaged: arrange the regular training/update sessions, motivate the users by showing them the value, train and inspire the power users, who can spread their knowledge within the team, enable some mandatory fields to fill in the information, do the forecasting/business update meetings from CRM/based on CRM data etc.

  • Hi Arie, I have adopted a new way of training our users with 15 min Teams call every Quarter/month called Sugar CRM Speed runs. Where I go through a specific module or new functionality with the aim of being faster and more effective at work. I´m marketing them as: spend 15 min now and save hours of work later. 

    Currently I had sessions on: 

    • Dropdown button next to edit button
    • Mobile app functionality

    Next week I´m going to make one for Preview window and focus dashboards. 

    I would like to progress further with this or at least collaborate with Sugar Club members on what to present to the users next time. 

  •   I like that idea! If you are looking for ideas on other quick and easy things to present, a good place to check out might be the Quick Tips area of SugarClub. We add new quick tips within each category and you can join the Sugar Documentation & Resources group for updates. There's a feed at the bottom with the most recently added quick tips and we also highlight changes to the featured content there. To receive an update for every new quick tip, use the email digest options on the right of that page.

    Enjoy!

    -Brenda

  •  , those are great suggestions.  , you may also be interested in joining our monthly Social Club sessions. These are live virtual meet-ups that allow you to meet other customers, share best practices, and discuss tips for driving adoption while exploring new areas of the product. We're planning on running a series of adoption-focused topics during our June, July, and August sessions. 

  • Thank you   and   I will explore the Quick tips and use it as a framework for my "Sugar Speed runs". I will join the next Social Club sessions.