A successful software selection depends heavily on well-defined business requirements. A common mistake that companies of all sizes make when selecting a new CRM package is to begin engaging with vendors too early, or even selecting a vendor before understanding their own requirements. This can result in a less than optimal fit for your business. Even a small business CRM selection should have the proper business requirements identified prior to diving into demonstrations.

When building your requirements, engage key stakeholders from potentially impacted areas. Ask them to walk through customer-related processes and jot down everything the system will need to support. What steps are in your sales process? I would encourage any business that is defining requirements (no matter what the subject area) to document its future state processes prior to building these requirements. There are a number of good books and websites on this subject, but requirements are much more thorough and detailed when written while walking through a well-documented process.

As you step through each process, consider each of the following.

• Scenarios: What scenarios must the CRM application facilitate? Do you need the ability to generate an email campaign based on customers who have demonstrated a specific buying pattern? Write down each of these scenarios.
• Data: What data elements do you need to capture and track? If you need to capture a prospective client's favorite restaurant, be sure to document it.
• Security: Do you have the need to share Account information across your company? Do you need to restrict the ability to view or edit Opportunities based on sales territories? Be sure to list these requirements too.

CRM requirements are generally broken into areas of functionality. Below I have outlined the areas of functionality I would start with and provided a few sample requirements for reference. Every company operates differently and therefore has different needs, so some of the examples may pertain to you and some will not.

Account Management

Examples of Account Management requirements may include:

• Capture company name (don't overlook even the most simple requirements)
• Capture names of Account Team members on an account
• Capture total number of employees at the account
• Associate multiple contacts to an account
• Associate multiple opportunities to an account

Contact Management

Examples of Account Management requirements may include:

• Capture first and last name of contact
• Capture childrens' names
• Allow contact to be associated with an account
• Allow contact to have no association to account
• Prevent end users from deleting a contact

Marketing (Campaign Management)

Examples of Marketing requirements may include:

• Associate campaigns with accounts
• Track which campaigns a contact/account has responded to
• Note in system when a campaign has been sent out
• Query by type of campaign (e.g. direct mail, email, trade show, event, telemarketing)
• Ability to link a Campaign to an Opportunity

Sales (Lead and Opportunity Management)

Examples of Sales requirements may include:

• Capture priority of Opportunity
• Capture target margin
• Configurable sales process
• Associate multiple contacts to an opportunity
• Associate multiple competitors for an opportunity

Support (Case and Service Order Management)

Examples of Support requirements may include:

• Assign Priority of a Case
• Change Priority of a Case
• Allow re-assignment of a Case
• Automatic notification of urgent cases
• Ability to add resolutions to a Knowledge Base

This does not necessarily include all CRM functions. Your company may have different needs and may need to support an Order Management, RMA, or other closely aligned process. I would also recommend tracking general and reporting requirements that may not fit into these defined groups.

General

• Preferred implementation model (on-demand or hosted internally)
• Connectivity requirements (do you need to access from a PDA or other mobile device?)
• Availability of data for future CRM implementations and migrations
• Minimum hardware requirements – are your PCs 10 years old and running Windows 95? Do you have any plans to upgrade in the near future? Be sure and document what specifications your current systems have – processor, RAM, and operating system. In most configurations, you can find this information by right-clicking “My Computer” and selecting “Properties”. If you have older PCs and plan to upgrade anyway, be sure and take note of minimum specifications required by your vendors so you can price out your hardware upgrades as well.
• Integration needs – do you need the application to integrate with Microsoft Outlook or a custom application?

Reporting

• Do you have any specific reports that should be available? For example, sales pipeline reports, average margin per sale by salesperson, etc. Take a look at the Metrics listed at Shoestring CRM and determine which you will need the ability to report on. Rich reporting functionality is essential to a quality CRM product.

Second Step: Prioritize Your Requirements