Adoption Discussions - Recent Threads

From Usage to Adoption: Navigating the Path to CRM Success

AJ Traver — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:56:12 GMT

Understanding Usage and Adoption
The journey to CRM success begins with distinguishing between usage and adoption. Usage measures operational engagement—logging in, utilizing seats, and updating records. Adoption, on the other hand, examines how effectively users integrate the CRM into daily workflows to drive meaningful business outcomes.

Adoption isn’t the starting point; it’s the destination. To achieve adoption, organizations must address the real hurdle: change management.

Change Management: The Real Challenge
CRM adoption struggles often mask a deeper issue—resistance to change. Driving change requires a thoughtful, programmatic approach that:

Aligns the CRM with organizational goals.

Engages and trains users effectively.

Cultivates ongoing support and feedback mechanisms.

Change management is not a one-time project; it’s a continuous journey requiring clear vision, leadership, and strategy.

Elements of Effective Change Management

A Clear Vision: Define success and ensure alignment across teams.

A Change Maker: Appoint a dedicated individual to oversee the CRM project.

Continuous Training: Keep users informed and confident with ongoing education.

Executive Involvement: Secure leadership support to maintain momentum.

Feedback Loops: Gather input to refine and optimize the system.

Transforming Challenges into Success
When adoption is achieved, the benefits are transformative—improved productivity, deeper customer relationships, and measurable business growth. Achieving adoption requires not just a focus on the CRM but a strategy that addresses the underlying behaviors and processes driving its use.

Reflection Question:

Does your organization struggle more with increasing usage, or is the real challenge driving adoption through change management?

Learn More
This blog is based on insights from the 2024 CRM Adoption Roadshows hosted worldwide. For more strategies and practical advice on overcoming adoption challenges, explore the comprehensive CRM Adoption Roadshow Resources available in SugarClub.

By focusing on usage, tackling change management, and investing in continuous learning, organizations can unlock the full potential of their CRM and achieve lasting success.

Assessing Change Readiness in your Organization

Brie Rowe — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 17:41:58 GMT

Whenever embarking on a new change management project, it can be beneficial to assess the change readiness of your organization to determine where to best focus your enablement efforts. A great way to do this is by conducting and analyzing a readiness assessment. This will help you compare which teams or areas of your business will be most impacted by the change with their awareness or perception of how they will be affected. You can find some sample templates in the Resources & Downloads area of our GROW Adoption Framework here.

Have you ever conducted a change readiness assessment? Were there any interesting findings from your survey?

Creating a Feedback Loop with your Users

Brie Rowe — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 21:22:05 GMT

An important aspect of any technology implementation is ensuring that the system is working for your users, not against them. Technology should make their jobs easier, not harder or more tedious. As system admins or team leaders, we can’t know exactly what it’s like to be in someone else’s role – that is, unless we ask them openly and honestly.

Any technology roll out should be an iterative process, which means that you need a method to consistently collect and action feedback from your various users about how the technology is working for them and where improvements can be made. Ensuring that you have a consistent and known process for soliciting feedback and letting users know how it was actioned is important to your success. If people don’t know that their suggestions have been heard, then eventually they’ll stop making them.

We’ve heard different methods from Sugar users about how they collect and action feedback – shared Slack or Teams channels, a User Council, and more. How are you soliciting and implementing feedback on your technology from your users? Tell us in the comments below.

Knowing your “Why”

Brie Rowe — Tue, 03 May 2022 21:25:14 GMT

Over the years I’ve worked with lots of customers on their technology implementations. One of the most impactful things you can do to ensure success is to have a clear understanding of why you are implementing a particular tool. Whether it’s CRM, Marketing Automation, or something entirely unrelated. using this reason as your “north star” gives you an anchor when things start getting crazy.

Even if you are well past your implementation, revisiting your current system in relation to where you are now as a company is incredibly useful. If you’re just getting started or need a bit of a refresh, check out the Defining Your Vision section of the GROW Adoption Framework.

Tell us in the comments below – what's your “why”? What problems are you solving for and/or what goals are you striving to achieve?

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

Jana Ferguson — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 18:41:05 GMT

Over the years it has become more and more apparent to me that this statement rings true in almost every aspect of life - “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Things go a lot smoother if you have a plan to follow, and this is especially true when it comes to adoption. You have to be intentional about how you intend to keep your users on track and active in your tools and systems.

It can be really easy to get focused on “going live” with a new project, but that go-live date is the start of the race, not the finish line, and in case it wasn’t obvious adoption is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s essential to create a long-term plan and supporting processes to ensure that users receive ongoing training, help, and encouragement. If you haven’t thought through this, check our tips for defining your adoption plan here. If you’re ready to define your own plan, download our Get Started Workbook for helpful templates.

If you’re already supporting adoption at your company – what are the ways you planned for ongoing adoption among your users? How is it working? Please share any tips you have with other members of Club in the comments below.

How I use CRM as a member of our CX Team

Jana Ferguson — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 17:05:05 GMT

We often think of CRM as being a sales tool – entering leads, tracking and closing opportunities, and so forth, but it’s so much more than that. As time goes on and you look at the entire lifespan of your customers, CRM touches (or should) so many roles within your organization. Today I thought I would share how I use CRM as a member of our CX team here at Sugar.

My primary role at Sugar is managing our Adoption team, which is responsible for SugarClub & SugarU. That doesn’t give the full picture though, because much of what we do involves engaging with other teams throughout Sugar to ensure customers have everything they need to be successful. We work closely with our customer marketing team, CSMs, product teams, Voice of the Customer program, and more.

Much of my CRM usage each day (yep, I use CRM at least once every day!) is more of a fact-finding mission than anything else. This might be finding out what product or version someone is using so I can help answer their question in SugarClub or checking on the health or history of an account before replying to a Voice of the Customer survey response. Below are some of my favorite features that I use each day:

List view filters – these are great for helping me find existing enhancement requests that customers may be asking about or identifying accounts or contacts that meet a particular criteria
Focus Drawers – this is one of my favorite features we’ve introduced to date. It makes finding information so quick and you’re able to see information in multiple modules at the same time.
Timeline Dashlet – this is also a newer introduction and gives me a great view into the interactions that have been happening within an account so I can give the most informed response possible when engaging with our customers.
Active Subscriptions Dashlet – this lets me easily see the current subscriptions a customer has and when they renew

If you are in a non-sales role, what are some of the ways you use CRM & what features help you work more efficiently?

Where do you stand with your CX goals?

Jana Ferguson — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:22:20 GMT

Here in the GROW group, we talk a lot about the relationship between People, Process, and Technology. In a recent webinar on CRM Excellence, 63% of our audience indicated that they felt there was misalignment between these elements within their organizations. That’s not surprising – it can be really challenging to strike the right balance to achieve optimal adoption.

If you’re unsure where your organization stands in aligning the three, taking our CX Assessment is a great way to evaluate your company’s current state of customer experience, reveal areas for improvement, and deliver prescriptive steps to improve across these three key areas—people, process, and technology.

After taking the assessment, we’ll provide you with a Customer Experience Score, tell you what it means, and provide free resources to help you define the next steps. We recommend having several different members of your organization take the assessment to get a broader picture.

Have you taken the assessment yet? If not, check it out here.

Ongoing education & training

Jana Ferguson — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:43:18 GMT

Ongoing training can be one of the best ways to ensure consistent adoption of your tools and tech within your organization. It isn’t always easy to keep everyone up to speed though. Luckily, we’re here to help! Each quarter our awesome SugarU team puts together a “What’s new” course for each new release. This is a great resource to share with your teams and users to help them adopt new features and functionality that could make their jobs easier and faster.

We also have some great resources in our Quick Video library and eLearning courses that you can leverage for new hire training or ongoing education. These are free and available to anyone who registers.

We hope you take advantage, and we’d love to hear any suggestions for additional courses or content in the comments below!

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Which features are "fan favorites" amongst your users?

Jana Ferguson — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 14:32:56 GMT

Hi all,

I’m curious to know which features of your Sugar products are fan favorites within your company. For example, I’m a huge fan of the focus drawer & timeline features in Sugar Sell. I find that for my role both features save me tons of time when trying to get a view of what’s happening at a particular account before I reach out or respond to a customer.

Let us know in the comments below which features you & your team enjoy or that you have seen drive adoption higher amongst your users. To help other readers, please specify which product and version you are referring to. If we can get enough shares we'll put together a fan favorites quick video showing everyone how to use all your favorite features.

Thanks!

What are your tips for great CRM adoption?

Jana Ferguson — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 16:15:09 GMT

In a recent webinar my teammate, Brie Rowe, and I shared our Top 5 Best Practices for CRM adoption. There were some great insights provided in the polls we launched to the audience during the webinar. If you’d like to check out the recording you can view it here: https://www.sugarcrm.com/resources/best-practices-crm-excellence/

Are there any tips you can share with other Club members on how you’ve driven adoption of CRM within your organization? If so, drop them in the comments below!

Where are you focusing attention in 2022? The importance of People, Process, AND Technology

Jana Ferguson — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 15:51:04 GMT

Many times, companies and teams believe that, when faced with a challenge, there is a new technology that will solve their problem. While this is true in a way, it can be more important to consider your current processes and why they may or may not be working for your organization. Maybe you’ve restructured roles or introduced new products and your current technology solution isn’t working for you anymore. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work for you anymore.

It’s important to consider all three aspects of an implementation – people, process, AND technology. They all fit together and each can take the leading role at different times. If you’ve had some new additions to your team, consider investing in the people element and lean into additional training and enablement. If you’ve made changes within your business, consider whether your past processes are still working for you. If not, determine where you can make changes to simplify and increase efficiency. The technology is the tool that supports the other two aspects, so once you’ve taken a look at your people and process, determine if your technology is effectively supporting them. If not, how can you make changes to do so?

Let us know – which aspect of people, process, and technology are you leaning into within your organization right now?

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How do you maintain quality data?

Jana Ferguson — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:42:47 GMT

Data Quality is a huge challenge for almost every organization. Despite everyone’s best efforts, things can get untidy quickly. Check out our Data Quality Best Practices from our Professional Services team in the Additional Resources of our GROW Adoption Framework.

What methods have you used to help maintain solid data integrity in your CRM?

Is your organization using a Digital Adoption tool?

Jana Ferguson — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 20:08:20 GMT

Lately we’ve seen a trend in more customers interested in Digital Adoption tools, such as Walk Me, Pendo, and others. These tools allow you to guide users through another tool, such as your website or an internal application, to assist them in learning to use the tool or complete a process.

Has your company invested in using a Digital Adoption Tool? If so, what interests you about it? How are you using it? Has it been beneficial?

Increasing CRM Usage

Jana Ferguson — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:27:55 GMT

One of the best ways to increase CRM adoption is to ensure that the CRM is a vital aspect of how your users do their job. As in, they can’t do their job without it. It should be a natural part of your processes, not something extra to do. Here are a few ways you can better incorporate your CRM into your daily work interactions:

Build a dashboard with KPIs for individuals/teams and review metrics during meetings straight from the dashboard
Use Sugar Connect to log emails and view, create, and edit CRM information direct from the your Gmail or Outlook inbox.
Link others to reports in CRM vs. downloading and sending a file

What tips would you give to others to increase CRM usage?

Who are the key players in your organization when it comes to Adoption?

Jana Ferguson — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 18:19:25 GMT

Hi everyone,

We recently posted our guide to help you select the members of your adoption team. This team might support a new roll out/change management program or giving new life to your existing system. As we worked to build the guide, it got me thinking - who are/were the critical members of your team that helped foster great adoption within your organization? What part of your organization are they in and what role did they play in your overall plan?

Here at Sugar, we find that team/department managers are a truly critical component of our adoption team. While some of them may be on our official change management committee, many of them play more of a supporting role by reinforcing important messages and processes with their individual teams. You can read more about the role of managers in our eBook, Managing through Change: The Key Role Managers Play in User Adoption.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, so leave a note in the comments below & share who on your team was a key player in adoption.

Thanks!

Jana

NEW ASSET - Build Your Adoption Team Guide

Jana Ferguson — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 14:17:43 GMT

Hi everyone,

We've added the Build Your Adoption Team Guide to our GROW Framework that breaks down the characteristics and responsibilities of key members of your adoption team. If you are looking to roll out a new digital transformation project, this guide can help you identify members of your organization that can help make your project a success! If you have any questions or want to give others advice on how you've selected key members of your team for past projects, pop them in the comment box below!

Best,

Jana

We want to feature you!

Jana Ferguson — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 14:39:13 GMT

Hi everyone,

We're so excited that you've been enjoying the GROW Adoption Framework. We've had close to 7500 views just in July and can't wait to share some additional resources we've been working on in August.

If you've used the framework to drive adoption within your business we'd love to hear about it and feature you at ClubZone. ClubZone is our all new, virtual user conference featuring live sessions from a cross section of Customers, Partners, and Sugars who will share their knowledge, best practices, use cases, demos and tools to boost proficiency. One of the topics we'll be featuring is Adoption - so if you have an adoption success story to tell we would love to feature you in a ClubZone session. You can read more about the event and submit your session idea here.

If you have any questions or comments I'm happy to answer them down below. And don't forget - Pre-registration for ClubZone is open now! We can't wait to see you there!

Welcome to the GROW Adoption Framework Group!

Jana Ferguson — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:52:46 GMT

Hi there,

We're so happy you've joined us in the GROW Adoption Framework group. The GROW Framework is full of great resources to help you at any phase of your adoption journey. Take our quiz to find where your organization fits within the framework or start at the beginning with the Get Started phase. Not only will you find resources and learning plans for each phase of your adoption journey, but the discussion forum is a great place to ask questions or share what has worked well for you with other Sugar customers.

We'd also love to have you join us for our Clubhouse session on June 11 to tour the Framework and have a live Q&A. We hope you find the content and engagement here useful and stay tuned for more to come! Be sure to join the group and turn on notifications to be alerted of future updates.

Your SugarCRM Adoption Team