The Partner as Professor: Teaching Users to Teach Themselves After Going Live with CRM 4.0

In a recent CRMUG webinar, a group of users who had recently launched Dynamics CRM 4.0 discussed the vitally important topic of support. Frank Vukovits, Director of Programming for CRMUG, asked participants what they thought was the best support option after a company has gone live: to be aligned with a partner, Microsoft, or rely solely on self-support?

The answer was as unanimous as it was nuanced. A partner is a wise investment for two primary reasons: First, the consultant is an invaluable support resource that should be utilized to perform complex tasks, particularly data migration. Second, and of equal importance, the consultant must serve as a teacher who can empower the user with knowledge, which will be utilized to set up a sustainable in-house support system for the company.

One user from a nationwide consulting firm shared her story of going live with CRM 4.0. Initially, her company tried to go live with no external support. Migration of data is typically far more complex than it seems, and the demands of cleaning and integrating data became too great. Her firm ultimately purchased a "starter kit" from a CRM consultant, which included eight hours of work, and the consultant would teach her how to perform data migration, customization, and other process. Importantly, the consultant trained her to train other users in her organization.

"This ended up being a great solution and very affordable," said the user. "Instead of paying a consultant to do all of the data migration, he showed me how to do it, which saved thousands of dollars. And I was able to train users afterwards."

Vukovits added, "It's the whole idea of training someone versus letting the consultant do all the work. If ...