Four Simple Techniques to Spread Adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Among Your Organization's Users

User adoption is always the final sticking point in a successful CRM program, even if your company has heavily focused on it.  Maybe you've selected a knowledgeable, proven partner to aid in your implementation.  Or, you've been proactive in your CRM program by reviewing processes and establishing a steering committee. Perhaps, you have provided the exact technology needs to the users and trained them thoroughly.  At the end of the day, if your users aren't able to see management using the CRM technology AND if the CRM program doesn't provide operational value to them-adoption will be an issue.

It is important to plan directly for user adoption.  Common issues with sales management and user adoption fall into a few buckets, for example:

1. CRM becomes a Friday morning pipeline update database, nothing more, nothing less.

2. Management doesn't leverage the data in CRM, especially dashboards and reports available for knowledge building and intelligent decision making.

3. There are no carrots for the users; only sticks are employed to force user adoption.

4.  The end users and their expectations are not being properly managed.

If your CRM initiative falls into one or more of these categories, you can inspect your business processes or CRM program direction for possible solutions.  Here are a few simple ideas to counter the adoption issues described above.

1. Give your account executives (AEs) functionality that increases or optimizes their selling time.  Give them the tools to make that happen.  While updating an opportunity record can seem tedious, providing address mapping integration or automated workflow leveraging CRM workflow capabilities will remove manual tasks.  This provides subtle incentive to go to the CRM record.  For example, AEs may rely heavily on their sales support staff through ...