{QUICK TIP} IMPORTANCE OF SELECTING THE RIGHT CONSULTANTS FOR YOUR CRM IMPLEMENTATIONS

Evaluating consultants is definitely simpler than selecting the CRM application. As with application evaluation, there are a number of criteria to be considered and selecting the right consultant is often crucial to success of CRM projects.

The term “right” used here is not just in the notion of correct, it is in the notion of appropriateness for specific implementations.

A consultant can help, not only technically but in generic terms as:

· Provide accurate and reliable information.

· Improve your decisions.

· Improve quality of the implementation.

Consultants have a broad range of expertise, so questions like below become important:

· What is the consultant’s special area of expertise: Definitely for Dynamics CRM I will choose a Dynamics CRM expert.

· What is the consultant’s knowledge of the industry?  If I am a financial institution, I will choose a consultant with prior implementation experience of the industry

or one which has experience on several areas.

· Will the consultant provide an independent perspective? This is important, Consultants should never agree to everything that customer says, otherwise they

cannot improve the implementation in any way.

· What are the research capabilities of analysing existing information?

· Ask for a sample of the consultant’s work? This is again just to help understand the experience.

· Cost! Yes, cost always matters.

For a Dynamics CRM consultant, I will prefer to say that the consultant should possess:

· Deep technical expertise of Dynamics CRM

· Deep understanding of the process of implementing CRM

· Experience of implementing CRM implementations.

Sometimes, there are scenarios where decision makers of an implementation are not people with CRM background. It works ok if they are customers, but any consultant without CRM experience working on

CRM project is not preferable especially if they will be involved in design, estimations and scoping.

Thank you for reading, always choose right consultants and make your Dynamics CRM systems a success story!

Happy CRMing!