In the business environment today, many CRM companies and IT departments are putting in a lot of effort to ensure your data is clean and to maintain its quality. This process is commonly known as CRM deduplication or data normalization. Unfortunately, no organization has had a very successful approach; not even Fortune 500 companies like Oracle, Microsoft, among others. Such questions as ‘what could be the problem?’ and ‘how are we incapable of solving this problem?’ linger in every business executive’s mind. Who then decides the standard and do institutions have the mandate to dictate the format for data storage? Well, the answer is NO. Every business model has its own unique needs and different institutions may prefer to manage their data via varied systems because of their own different reasons. Hence, it would be wrong if a vendor enforces a single set of rules on all their clients without taking into consideration of the unique needs of each organization. It is up to the organization to identify their needs and to only adopt a CRM system that works for them. Finding the right implementation strategy for any business can be tricky. Each organization has to account for the size of the organization, existing infrastructure and various business operations within the organization, and thus installation plans need to adapt to such factors. The first thing that any organization needs to do is to create and develop a CRM data plan to avoid duplication of data within the CRM system, and thereby ensure that data is clean and of good quality. As an organization, it is essential that you have a clear well-laid strategy and an idea of what objectives you would like to fulfill by implementing a CRM system. It is also worth noting that even though your CRM system could be up and running perfectly, there are times when you encounter some challenges with the system. In many cases, they could be issues to do with underutilization in some areas or some bad decisions or practices, which might hamper your implementation efforts. In order to have a seamless CRM, here are some of the best practices that organizations can adopt. Best Practices for Customer Relationship Management Software Implementation 15 Best Practices for Customer Relationship Management Software Implementation CRM Best Practices 1- Audit your requirements and objectives A business should perform a complete inventory of its existing assets and infrastructure requirements before creating an implementation schedule. You should consider the following: what CRM features your organization might need; available budget for purchase and implementation of the CRM system; the scope of infrastructure needed to host such a system; and the kind of training needed to ensure your employees can make maximum use of the system toward achieving set targets. By doing this, you will have enough information to create an implementation schedule and avoid hitches along the way. CRM Best Practices 2- Have a well-defined implementation strategy If you really want [...]