Six Tips to Select the Right CRM System
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
Research estimates that up to 63% of CRM systems fail to meet expectations – and a failed CRM implementation can be extremely costly, not just in terms of the financial expense, but also because of the costs in lost time – and credibility. Even more impactful: you don’t often get a second chance at CRM success. This means that it’s critical to select the right CRM system.
The good news is, CRM success is possible. If you simply follow a few critical steps before and during the CRM selection process,
Six Tips to Select the Right CRM System
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
Research estimates that up to 63% of CRM systems fail to meet expectations – and a failed CRM implementation can be extremely costly, not just in terms of the financial expense, but also because of the costs in lost time – and credibility. Even more impactful: you don’t often get a second chance at CRM success. This means that it’s critical to select the right CRM system.
The good news is, CRM success is possible. If you simply follow a few critical steps before and during the CRM selection process,
Benesch – A Business Development Intelligence Success Story
ABOUT BENESCH
Benesch is a business law firm with offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Chicago, Hackensack, Indianapolis, Shanghai and Wilmington. The firm serves national and international clients that include public and private, middle market and emerging companies as well as private equity funds, entrepreneurs, not-for-profit organizations, trusts and estates.
The firm will celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2018 and continues to expand geographically and grow steadily. Since the beginning of 2015, the firm has welcomed over 75 new attorneys, increased the number of attorneys firm wide to 191 and opened a new office in Chicago. The strategic addition of these attorneys and offices is another step in executing the firm’s growth plan and goal to continuously enhance the service provided to clients.
ORBA – A CRM Success Story
ABOUT ORBA
Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, Ltd. (ORBA) is a full-service accounting, tax and consulting firm dedicated to helping clients reach their goals and achieve success. Based in Chicago, ORBA was founded in 1977 and has grown to more than 135 employees over the past 40 years.
ORBA serves clients in a variety of industries, providing audit, consulting and tax services to privately held companies, not-for-profit organizations and high net worth individuals.
ORBA delivers their services with a holistic understanding of accounting, tax, financial and broader challenges, along with a passionate,
Bradley – A CRM, Data Quality & eMarketing Success Story
ABOUT BRADLEY
Bradley has more than 500 attorneys and nine U.S. offices in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and the District of Columbia, providing an extensive geographic base from which to represent regional, national and international clients.
The firm’s attorneys serve as national coordinating counsel, regional counsel and statewide counsel for clients in various industries. Attorneys and staff combine legal experience and knowledge with sophisticated understanding of industries to work side by side with clients and come up with practical, strategic solutions specifically tailored to their businesses and operations.
SITUATION
Bradley had attempted two previous CRM implementations without success.
Recognizing the Quiet Power of Your CRM Data
by Julie Amos, Chief Strategy Officer and Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
Marketing departments today often spend a great deal of their time focusing on things that involve strategies and planning. To support these critical activities, they have built up and aligned key staff and resources. This is completely understandable given the pressure they are under to deliver results and value. While the pressure has always been significant, in recent years, with competition at unimaginable levels, it has intensified significantly.
However, it may actually surprise many marketers to discover that one of the most important tools to help their firms deliver value and develop business isn’t a strategic or planning initiative.
Six Tips to Select the Right CRM System: Evaluate Products and Providers
Once you have identified a few CRM systems that meet your requirements, you can begin the vetting process to select the right CRM system for your firm.
Tip 4: Direct the Demonstrations
It’s essential that the CRM demonstrations allow you to make an informed decision and adequately and accurately compare systems, features and pricing. It’s also important at this phase to again involve your users. CRM systems have a reputation for being notoriously difficult to implement, and the last thing you want is to be responsible for unilaterally selecting a system that then doesn’t meet user expectations.
Dealing with Data Quality Depression
Nothing can be more frustrating than dealing with data quality. But when it comes to CRM success,
there are few things that are more important. While data quality tasks can be a monotonous and
mundane job, left ‘untreated’, a CRM database can rapidly deteriorate into a major headache, causing
end users to doubt and distrust the data – and refuse to use the system.
The First Step
The first step in dealing with data quality depression is admitting you have a problem – or lots of them.
Your end users are out of control.
Contact Management 101: 10 Top Tips for Success
– By Christina R. Fritsch, JD, Client Success Consultant
As the new school year gets underway and students get back to class, it seems like a good time to share a few lessons on contact and relationship management. One group of ‘pupils’ for whom this information can be particularly relevant is new attorneys who are joining a firm for the first time and who are eager to get to the head of the class by focusing on marketing and business development early in their careers.
It may seem to many people that contact management skills should come naturally lawyers,
Contact Management 101: Caring for Your Most Important Assets – Relationships
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
To help communicate the importance of centralized contact management, we have compiled 10 top tips:
- Think of contact management as an investment. Contacts are valuable commodities and investing just a little time up front can pay dividends in the future.
- Value your relationships. For attorneys, there is almost no more important contributor to career success.
- Capture complete information. Without key details, you can’t effectively communicate with contacts.
- Update contact information regularly. Up to 30% of contact information changes each year,
Contact Management 101: Understanding the Payoff
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
The reasons why attorneys manage their contacts in different ways isn’t important, but the challenge this presents for law firms is. A centralized collection of clean, correct and complete contacts is critical to effective marketing and business
development. Additionally, having contact and relationship information outside the firm’s central systems and security may present additional problems. As a result, many firms may find it important to get attorneys to develop consistent practices for centralized contact management.
So, what is the best way for firms to control the contact conundrum?
Contact Management 101: So Many Contacts, So Many Ways to Manage Them
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
While formal contact management may be foreign to younger lawyers, this isn’t necessarily a generational issue. In fact, we now frequently find that even some of the most experienced lawyers are managing their contacts in different ways. The issue also isn’t caused by inattention or idleness. Actually, there are a number of valid reasons why changes in contact management methodologies have been taking place, such as:
- Attorneys are out of the office more often today, so it’s critical to have contacts on their mobile devices where they can easily access them
- Advances in search technology have made it easy to find contacts anywhere,
Contact Management 101: 10 Top Tips for CRM Success
by Chris Fritsch, Client Success Consultant
With another school year well underway, it seems like a good time to share a few lessons on contact and relationship management. One group of ‘pupils’ for whom this information can be particularly relevant is new attorneys who are joining a firm for the first time and who are eager to get to the head of the class by focusing on marketing and business development early in their careers.
It may seem to many people that contact management skills should come naturally to lawyers, for whom relationships are crucial.