Building the team

A critical factor in the success of your CRM initiative will be deciding who is on your strategy and implementation team. The size of the team will obviously vary between organizations; those with three staff members will have to do things differently than those with 300. While this section is oriented towards larger organizations, the principles apply to any size.

The implementation team includes the people who will play a direct role in the ongoing project development. Not everyone affected by the CRM initiative needs to be on this core team tasked with driving the strategy and implementation. A good working group seldom is larger than six to eight people, and very often, a smaller group can be more effective. What is most important is that this team should be representative of the different voices of the project—organization, leadership, end users, developers/implementers, important stakeholders, and so on.

Usually, it is immediately clear that the involvement and cooperation...