The Manufacturing CRM Playbook: Critical Steps for Implementation Success

Transcript

What are the main challenges manufacturers face that lead them to consider a CRM?

Sophie Schaffran: Sales cycles are getting really long. There's a lot of people involved a lot of times. It can be national, international and a lot of custom quoting involved. So perhaps all of the manual systems that you used to rely on, or maybe an older CRM just isn't cutting it anymore.

There's also a lot of complexity in the manufacturing space. So all this customer data order data can live in a lot of different systems, some that you own some you may not own. And so the importance of getting all that data into one source of truth, and making sure that it's all communicating with each other.

Again, these outdated tools, manual processes. It makes it a lot harder to manage all of your clients, all of your relationships, and your team as well, and how they communicate with each other, and then it can also hold you back from scaling. So if all these things aren't working together, it's hard to make those smart and nimble decisions.

Can implementing a CRM actually make things worse if you're not prepared?

Sophie Schaffran: A CRM can help fix all of these problems. However, what we find is that if you're not properly prepared before starting a project like this, it can actually exacerbate some of these issues, too. So it's still possible to have the right technology and still miss out on opportunities or still have a poor customer experience.

It can still be hard for your teams to connect. It can still be hard to drive these decisions with data if everything isn't clean and talking to each other. And if your team doesn't understand, really the value of why you're doing it. So these are the things that we're trying to avoid and kind of get you thinking about a little bit today and help you prepare.

Change Management & User Adoption

What are the four main categories of goals and challenges when manufacturers adopt a new CRM?

Tina Bishop: Manufacturing organizations often have goals and challenges that can be thought of as falling into 4 buckets which you see here on your screen: data, collaboration, integration and scaling. And then my main area, which is change management. We, or manufacturing organizations often have these goals of what they want the CRM to be able to do for them. But there are often challenges that are associated with those goals, and sometimes it's hard to know how to move from what your goal is, get over what the challenge is in order to have a smooth and successful user adoption.

How do you define the relationship between change management and user adoption?

Tina Bishop: When we think about change management, we think about change management as the vehicle that's going to get us to user adoption. So we think change management is the process. And then user adoption is the outcome. We can also think of change management as a series of activities that we're going to take our users through so that we are changing their mindsets so that we can then change their behavior. And ultimately that behavior is, we want them to adopt and use the system. And we want to think of it in that order. The mindset to the behavior and not the other way around. So we don't want to just say, well, they're going to use the system because we told them to. We're actually going to build them up. So that user adoption is more successful.

What framework does your team use for change management in manufacturing CRM implementations?

Tina Bishop: When we do change management, we don't want to just do it willy-nilly. It's not fluffy, it's not woo woo. It's not just getting everyone in a room and saying, Well, how do you feel about it? It's actually taking our users through a tried and true framework, and the framework that we use most often at Denamico is a framework called ADKAR, and that's actually a framework that's been put together by an organization known as Prosci. That does a lot of certifications and a lot of research around change management. It's been around a long time because it works, and it particularly works well in manufacturing spaces where teams, organizations, processes are very process driven, and teams are very well established in their work patterns.

In general, the ADKAR framework is an acronym for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. And we take people through these in several stages, and we never want to skip a stage.

Why is it important not to skip stages in the ADKAR framework?

Tina Bishop: We want to make sure that we're building the awareness of the need for change that we're giving people a chance to really desire to want to make the change. And then we're going to come in with training and make sure that we give them the knowledge and the ability to actually do what we need them to do within, in this case the CRM platform. And then we want to make sure that we pay attention to reinforcement and basically making sure that we're rewarding people for that change in behavior.

What is the first critical step in implementing effective change management for a CRM?

Tina Bishop: The first step is conducting stakeholder interviews. Now, again, there's a methodology for this. There's a whole list of questions that we can ask people. We're not just putting them in a room again and saying, Well, how do you feel about the work that you do. There's some specific inputs that we want to get from them around what they do today, and how we know the adoption of a CRM system is going to impact them in the future. Then we can use some of those inputs in the communication that we make to them. And this is where we're starting to build that awareness and starting to build that desire. Because we're going to tell them why the change is important. And most importantly, we're going to map it to some of those specific use cases that they have brought up that are causing them pain.

How does proper change management improve CRM training effectiveness?

Tina Bishop: If we've set up the awareness and the desire correctly, the knowledge and the ability piece which I mentioned was training is going to be much better because there's actually going to be some context around it. So we're actually training people in the context of what the change is going to be, how it's going to impact them and how some specific processes are going to be made easier. We're not just coming in and doing training in a vacuum where we're talking about the features of a platform, but there's really no context to the end user.

How can you measure the success of user adoption through specific business metrics?

Tina Bishop: We want to make sure, as we're planning to do a CRM system upgrade, or maybe an implementation for the first time, that throughout the first part of the process that we're saying, what are the metrics that we're going to have that define us being successful? How is change management going to help us change behavior so that people will use the system. And then, when we go back in to look 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years later, what types of things have we seen throughout our different departments that have told us that user adoption, by way of change management has been successful.

What specific metrics show successful user adoption for sales teams?

Tina Bishop: Some of those metrics for sales teams might be higher lead conversion. Why? Because they've adopted the system, and in doing so, that means that some of the administrative lift off of getting stuff in the system, off of tracking, off of doing activities, all of that sort of thing has been lifted, and so we can see the fact that they now can concentrate more fully on converting their leads, on actually doing the business of selling.

And so they're having higher lead conversions and also shorter sales cycles that can also lead to improved forecasting. So if you've got a better quality lead, and you've got more confidence in the revenue associated with that lead, that means that your forecasting is going to be more accurate and more dependable.

How does user adoption impact marketing team performance?

Tina Bishop: Marketing can also see the results of user adoption through improved lead quality in much the same way that sales does. They also have the ability to better target and better segment when they're doing outreach campaigns, trying to get prospective clients in that's going to lead to better campaign effectiveness and performance overall, and that will bleed down to, so that when they're finally handing off those clean and qualified leads to sales that leads to better alignment between sales and marketing.

What are the measurable benefits of CRM adoption for customer service teams?

Tina Bishop: Our customer service teams when they've adopted the platform well, we see that come up because they're having to look, maybe in fewer areas to find the information that they need to service clients. So that means that first call resolution rates are going to be improved. So they're able to resolve things on the first call or the first touch. That also means that they've reduced the amount of time in those touches, such as average call handling time or average time to respond to emails that leads to overall customer satisfaction. And then all of those things roll up to on an organization wide level, increased revenue and ROI.

Data Migration Strategies

What unique data challenges do manufacturers face when implementing a CRM?

Alise Kostick: When we talk about data migration for manufacturers, there are just some things to consider that we see when we work with clients, and a lot of it goes back to people have a lot of systems and a lot of structures within those systems. So we have clients who have systems that are 10, 20 years old, that they still like to use, as well as people that are still filling out spreadsheets, pieces of paper and index cards that we then have to figure out how to get into a CRM to make their lives easier.

Along with that they also have account structures that have some parent child relationships, or they work with other companies to sell into certain accounts that have to be taken into account before we can really set up a CRM. Selling models might be different if they're working with distributors or partners or regionally, and then just the sales cycle is quite long, and the buying cycle can start at the beginning of the year, they don't finish till the end, and there's a lot of relationships and history behind clients that will kind of shape how we set up the CRM once we're in there.

Why is it important to clean data before migrating to a new CRM?

Alise Kostick: Just making sure that data is correct before we go into a new CRM is how we like to approach these things to make sure that we're not popping a team into a CRM to train with Tina, and they're confused as to all the data that's in there, and it might not make sense.

What should be the first consideration when moving to a new CRM like HubSpot?

Alise Kostick: When going into a new CRM like HubSpot, the first thing we kind of think about is what is the source of truth going to be for your organization moving forward? Generally, when this is chosen, we know that everything we're going to bring in is going to be clean. And knowing that this is where everyone's going to look kind of holds everyone to a standard of, let's put the right things in for the right people to see in order to make sure that everyone has the same visibility and understands this is how we're using things. This is what we're training on. This is the data we want.

How do you determine what data should be migrated and who owns it?

Alise Kostick: To do that, we look at the data that we want to bring in and the goal of that data, whether it's coming in net new, or if we have to pull over historical, and then we have to decide who owns that data throughout each phase of the project, because, as much as we'd like to say, it's a click a button, and it's all in, it just isn't. So just ownership between teams, resources really comes into effect here because we want the right people owning the data. If things need to be updated, or if the organization kind of shifts, goals, or what they're pulling in.

What is the audit, clean, and map strategy for data migration?

Alise Kostick: The kind of strategy we work with is audit, clean and map. So we generally say garbage in is garbage out. We don't like to bring in dirty data into your new CRM. So if things aren't clean beforehand, it generally leads to a new piece of technology with data that's not useful. And then that really hurts adoption, like Tina talked about because people are using stuff that doesn't necessarily make sense.

Along with that, systems that we're either migrating with or pulling data out of are generally inconsistent with each other. So, looking at what data makes the most sense, what formats do your team members like to use things? And how can it be digested? What's the easiest way to bring that into your new CRM. And then having a plan. If we go in with no plan and treat it like the Wild West generally 3, 6, 9, 12 months down the road usage drops. People are unhappy.

What should you look for during a data audit before CRM migration?

Alise Kostick: The first step and kind of the longest step is the audit of all systems. Generally tech stacks aren't just one or 2 pieces of technology. And in some cases those spreadsheets, emails, pieces of paper, post it notes, what have you. So kind of going through and looking at all the systems that your teams touch, whether that sales, marketing, service, operations, whatever is going to impact the contacts that you guys deal with on a day to day is something that needs to be audited for what should come over, what shouldn't come over.

And while you're kind of going through these audits, we have to look for things like, do you have 5 records with the same email addresses? Do you have people with partial emails or no emails or your phone numbers for some people and not others, what needs to come over. And should we complete those records before we bring them in. And what's important to your org. Also looking at outdated information, if you're kind of on that B2B route, have businesses closed? Do you not work with certain people anymore? Because you're not a vendor?

How does cleaning data before migration improve the sales and marketing process?

Alise Kostick: Really kind of narrowing down what's important to bring in, what information do we need, and is it up to date before we pull it into your new CRM generally makes it easier to let your team hit the ground running because they're not running into issues like email addresses not working, these accounts we don't actually talk to, we shouldn't have renewals for accounts that no longer exist. So cleaning beforehand generally just makes your sales process a little easier, and the marketing team can kind of get to the right people. They're not having bounced emails and keeping you guys' domain and email sending scores really clean.

What are the key steps for cleaning up CRM data?

Alise Kostick: We kind of look at a standard naming convention across the board. So everyone is on the same page whether it's naming businesses, for how dates are set up, contact records, if you're typing in what you're using them for, if there's organizations in different states, if you're using things like that kind of cleaning up what that looks like. So it's the same across the board that way. When they do get to the training phase, everyone's on the same page, and Tina can easily show people how to learn these things.

And then, looking at what's important to bring over and what's not in these systems, we can see people with thousands of properties. So understanding what people actually want to bring over and use. Obviously, contacts, deals, accounts are important things like someone's wife's birthday, maybe not as important, but it'll work its way into a CRM every once in a while. And then making sure that obviously the duplicates get removed. And then, when we're migrating data over, we can trace it back to say this happened correct. This is what was supposed to come over. This is what we need moving forward.

How does data mapping work when migrating to HubSpot?

Alise Kostick: And then the fun part, the mapping, looking at whatever technology you're using beforehand, and then HubSpot in this case, and figuring out a mapping plan. So if they're native fields that both your current software and HubSpot have in place, like first name, last name, those are easy to map. And then, when it comes to fields that might be unique to your organization, coming up with customizations in HubSpot to map to those fields so that you guys are getting the right info.

Big thing here is paying attention to what fields need to come over. If deals have to connect to contacts, or if you guys use a ticketing system making sure those custom properties match, what the route is of tickets match to tickets, companies matched companies, contacts matched contacts. That's the big thing we see is making sure because HubSpot does give you the ability to map to multiple different parts of the hub, making sure the data coming in, although it might be in one place, maps across the new software so that your team can find the right thing in the right spot moving forward.

What are the best practices for maintaining data quality and scalability?

Alise Kostick: Best practices, these are big ones for us, especially the bottom with scalability and flexibility. They all kind of feed into that. So just making sure, you know who owns your data flow, the rules of the data, and how this is going to scale. Having these keys kind of in one person's hands is a little bit important, but making sure all the teams know like, how are we mapping our customers, why is it important, why are we mapping our products certain ways as long as each team understands their mapping and how they're going to work, it helps data move easily.

And then just establishing the rules that go along with these things, whether it's managers own data, team members are responsible for their data, making sure that people are checking in. And there's rules in place. So if something does go awry, a flag gets raised right away, and we can fix problems out of the gate. And then when you're going to bring in new data, making sure that is this scalable, is this flexible, if we change, those are just 3 big, important things that we keep in mind when we go through best practices.

Integration & System Architecture

What is the difference between data migration and integration?

Dave Braun: Data migrations are typically used at the beginning of implementations when you actually have to set up the system, get the data in, get it in right, or when you're implementing a new feature on an already existing system. So you need to take all that data from all those other places, put it into the new system to leverage that correctly. If you have to do that more than once or on a regular basis, you're probably looking at something automated, like an integration to make sure that that happens through a system rather than people physically pushing buttons. And that just helps with efficiency. It helps if someone's on vacation, you make sure that that data is still moving and it eliminates human error.

What are the key questions to ask when planning a CRM integration?

Dave Braun: When we start looking at an integration, we have to ask ourselves the why, the what, the how, and the where. So, why are we integrating is the first question, right? You'll see a lot of folks who think, you know, they've got a whole bunch of data all over the place, and it'd just be great to put it into the new system, too. So you have to be really careful about making sure that you're not just duplicating data for the sake of duplicating data. You really need to think about your business case and what the end users are going to get out of that. So you can properly train and plan.

Why is understanding the business case critical before integrating systems?

Dave Braun: I would say that that discovery and the planning and the data cleansing and then the data migration is a precursor to an integration. So if you're jumping into an integration without thinking about those things, you probably haven't really sat there and thought about, why are we doing this particular thing. Next is identifying the what you're trying to do. What are you trying to move over? So if you've done a data migration, or if you've done that discovery, you probably already know what the what is. You're just determining what data, what objects you're moving over, and then making sure that it's available to the users.

How do you determine the technical requirements for data integration?

Dave Braun: The next thing is, it gets into a little bit of muddy water for especially non-technical folks. It's, how are we moving that data over? And how often is that happening? And in what direction does that data need to move? So is it a one way integration from your ERP system to your CRM every night to bring over new contacts or new orders, those kinds of things? Or are we doing things in the CRM system that have to move back into that ERP system? And that just adds a lot of complexity.

The big thing here is it going to be real time? So do we need to have that data immediately. As soon as one system changes, we need to know in the other system? Is it something that we can batch nightly? For you tech geeks out there, does it need to happen async? The difference there is usually real time things, they're like one shot like I click a save button in one system, and that data moves to all the other integrated systems very, very quickly. If you've got a lot of data, a lot of repeated data, things that don't necessarily have to happen in both systems at the same time you should consider doing background processes asynchronously batching them for efficiency sake, save network bandwidth, that kind of thing.

What factors determine where an integration should be built?

Dave Braun: The last thing is determine where this integration needs to take place. So where does the data move when it's going from system A to system B, and that's usually more talking about your tech stack. When you think about, how does a migration happen that could be flat files, it could be a system doing that for you. Data integrations are almost always automated systems. And you start to have to think about, are you looking at a cloud infrastructure? Is there some sort of server script that you can set up to make this happen. And that really defines your tech stack.

What are the different types of CRM integrations available?

Dave Braun: The takeaway here is, no 2 integrations are the same. You can kind of block them up. Some integrations are fairly simple and straightforward, fairly lightweight, and some of them can be very, very technically complicated and very, very complex. So typically we break it down into 4 buckets.

There's native integrations where HubSpot has tie-ins to other systems where you can just flip a switch in HubSpot, and the integration happens after a little bit of configuration. There's a second level of that where you need a little bit more than that sort of plugin or add-in can do for your system. And this is where we start talking about low code, no code frameworks like Workato, or even doing some custom coding and workflows and things like that inside of HubSpot. So that's sort of that next level up where you need a more robust automation system.

Then we start talking about building into custom APIs. So if there's typically an ERP system where maybe it's older, maybe it's an AS 400 system, or you've got a sophisticated on premise ERP ecosystem, then we have to start looking at the various APIs that we may have to do some custom work against.

And then once you start talking about custom work, you might have to start talking about the more complicated category, which is the pro dev. Do you have to take this up into a platform? Do you have to do custom staging for that data to do your transform process when you're moving things over. And then you have to start thinking about security and data orchestration to make sure data moves over in the right order at the right time without interrupting your users and corrupting your data.

What compliance and security considerations are critical for CRM integrations?

Dave Braun: When you're thinking about doing an integration, one of the first things you should ask is, what are the frameworks or the compliance policies that we have to adhere to when we're implementing whatever we're thinking about implementing. So limiting data exposure, protecting your endpoints, hardening your network to make sure that you're not exposing it to the global Internet and malicious actors. And that really means planning for compliance, like SOC, ISO, PCI, GDPR, whatever industry regulations you have, that kind of thing to make sure that you're not accidentally exposing yourself, your data and your clients' data to something that it shouldn't be exposed to.

How do you plan for future scalability with CRM integrations?

Dave Braun: And then tying your architecture into future growth. So a lot of the no code platforms, low code, no code platforms are great for getting a basic integration started and the scalability and capabilities of those platforms varies platform to platform. So if you've got simple data structures, you're just moving over contacts to contacts, low code, no code may be a great option for you. When you have to start integrating a bunch of systems, maybe some cloud ecosystems, you have to do a lot of data transformation, then you have to start looking at something that's a little bit more scalable, probably some pro code work here. So again, as easy or as complicated as you need it to be. Just make sure that you're considering compliance at every step.

What questions should you answer before building CRM integrations?

Dave Braun: Before you start getting into building any of this stuff, there's a lot of questions that you have to ask. What's your most valuable customer data? And where does it flow from? So think about your user journey and what they have to do, think about the data points that they have to touch and when they need that data to come through.

Who needs visibility into what and when? That ties into the timing again, but it's also about reporting. So nobody likes a report that's out of date, and you have to wait for a nightly batch to go. So you know, you just have to know what your business needs, when those reports and things need to be available, when do your dashboards need to be available for your users, and what does that really do to enable or hamper your business if you're not planning that out correctly.

Integrations are really about solving pain points. So how do you get from systems A, B and C into system D, to maybe unify your data, to make sales lives easier, marketing lives easier, to enable certain things in your business that are probably manual or tedious today. That's when integrations can really help.

And then think about obviously, the future of your business. What does your business look like in 3 to 5 years with this integration.

What is the risk of creating too many small integrations?

Dave Braun: A lot of times, what you'll see with integrations is people jump into them because they think it's just really easy to move data over, and they run their business in a way that creates a lot of little integrations and technical tie-ins. And you create this sort of spaghetti network of all of your data. And sooner or later you start to realize that that's a scalability problem. So making sure that you're really understanding what you're trying to do for your business, and how that's going to impact your business in the future is an important consideration to have. And then, last, but not least, making sure that you're paying attention to your compliance needs before you actually start clicking buttons.

What is the most important thing to understand about integrations before starting?

Dave Braun: Making sure that you have a clear understanding of the outcome before you integrate is a key part of deciding everything else in between.

Common Pitfalls & Best Practices

What do people commonly underestimate about data migrations and integrations?

Dave Braun: I think with data integrations and architecture, especially folks that don't have strong IT staff inside of their organization, they typically tend to underestimate the complexity of things like data migrations and integrations. You tend to hear comments like, Oh, it's just a flat file like, import it, and it'll be fine. But as Alise illustrated, there's a lot of consideration that goes into making sure that data is clean. And then, as I was speaking about in my slides, there's a lot of timing issues that come in with that. So just understanding that when you start talking about moving data between systems, there's a lot of complexity that takes a lot of consideration to do it right.

Are CRM integrations a one-time setup or do they require ongoing maintenance?

Dave Braun: These aren't just fire and forget systems where you build it up once and it just works. The ecosystem of your network evolves over time. HubSpot's going to advance. Your ERPs are going to advance. There will be new security protocols that come into the space. And you really need a partner that's either watching that for you, and or can be there when things do break and familiar with your system to make sure that you stay up and running and it doesn't impact your business negatively.

Sophie Schaffran: Once you integrate, it's not just a set it and forget it. You have to keep in mind that you're going to have to, either internally or with a partner, be able to maintain those over time.

Why is relying on a single person to manage CRM systems risky?

Alise Kostick: I think going off what Dave just said about it's kind of not a set it and forget it, I think that ties in really well with understanding who holds the keys. Because a lot of times we'll hear, Oh, this person's our IT admin, or HubSpot admin, and they're responsible for everything that the partners are doing, and these integrations and migrations, and then that person either moves jobs or even moves internally, but is no longer handling it, or the org grows, and other people need to get their hands kind of dirty with these integrations as they scale. And we've given the keys to one person within the org, and they didn't document. It's really hard to kind of untangle the web, even if your integration set up perfect.

It's kind of hard to untangle and figure out why do we do this? Why didn't we choose to do this at that point? Should we be doing something new? So just relying solely on a single resource, or one admin creates a long term risk, because we can't predict what's going to happen down the road to that single person.

How important is documentation throughout the CRM implementation process?

Alise Kostick: Understanding who needs to know what to just have their ear to the ground without being involved in day to day, is super important and then just documentation from day one and continually making those updates when, like Dave said, things scale and change is important because that can be handed off super easily versus having a 90 day period of we need to figure out who did what and why. You don't want to recreate the wheel every time you need to change something.

Sophie Schaffran: That's a fantastic point. I feel like we could take that away in a lot of different areas of business, too, not just CRM.

What is the biggest misconception about implementing a user-friendly CRM like HubSpot?

Tina Bishop: This is kind of cliche, but it's a well-worn adage, but I think it's apropos in that if you build it and build it well, people will come meaning people will see the light without you having to do anything else. So a platform like HubSpot, which is very user friendly and very intuitive, and then you're following and doing all the right things to get all of your data in there, and so kind of feeling like, well, it's all of our stuff is there, and the system is really intuitive that we don't really need to train people. We don't really need to bring them around. They should just see how cool and how amazing it is and how it's going to work for their life, and we don't really need to do anything else.

I think that's a mistake that you can put a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of resources into some of those areas that Dave and Alise covered, as well as just the HubSpot platform itself. But if you don't have a plan for getting your users adopted, again that shift in mindset to affect behavior and not the other way around, then you're going to have something that you've invested a lot in that is just not going to get a lot of use.

Sophie Schaffran: That human component absolutely can't skip it.