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?

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?

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Jonas Morling — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 08:34:13 GMT

Thank you Brenda Rossetto and Brie Rowe I will explore the Quick tips and use it as a framework for my "Sugar Speed runs". I will join the next Social Club sessions.

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Brie Rowe — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 17:45:17 GMT

Brenda Rossetto, those are great suggestions. Jonas Morling, you may also be interested in joining our monthly Social Club sessions. These are live virtual meet-ups that allow you to meet other customers, share best practices, and discuss tips for driving adoption while exploring new areas of the product. We're planning on running a series of adoption-focused topics during our June, July, and August sessions.

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Brenda Rossetto — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:59:07 GMT

Jonas Morling I like that idea! If you are looking for ideas on other quick and easy things to present, a good place to check out might be the Quick Tips area of SugarClub. We add new quick tips within each category and you can join the Sugar Documentation & Resources group for updates. There's a feed at the bottom with the most recently added quick tips and we also highlight changes to the featured content there. To receive an update for every new quick tip, use the email digest options on the right of that page.

Enjoy!

-Brenda

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Jonas Morling — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 08:27:31 GMT

Hi Arie, I have adopted a new way of training our users with 15 min Teams call every Quarter/month called Sugar CRM Speed runs. Where I go through a specific module or new functionality with the aim of being faster and more effective at work. I´m marketing them as: spend 15 min now and save hours of work later.

Currently I had sessions on:

Dropdown button next to edit button
Mobile app functionality

Next week I´m going to make one for Preview window and focus dashboards.

I would like to progress further with this or at least collaborate with Sugar Club members on what to present to the users next time.

RE: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

Nancy Villasenor — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 19:48:26 GMT

"Failing to plan is planning to fail" - so true, I will be sharing this quote with my team!

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.

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Alena Zidek — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 20:17:03 GMT

Hi Arie, we can cover your questions in our next meeting. But briefly it is important to keep the users engaged: arrange the regular training/update sessions, motivate the users by showing them the value, train and inspire the power users, who can spread their knowledge within the team, enable some mandatory fields to fill in the information, do the forecasting/business update meetings from CRM/based on CRM data etc.

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Arie Looije — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:21:45 GMT

Out of curiousity: How have you arranged the resources/support for the continuous training/functional support of CRM for users?

We have 30 organisations globally and during the development and implementation key users have been assigned. However after the implementation they don't seem to have the time next to day to day work to effectively support CRM and its users on a local level.

RE: Increasing CRM Usage

Arie Looije — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:21:13 GMT

Out of curiousity: How have you arranged the resources/support for the continuous training/functional support of CRM for users?

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?

RE: Knowing your “Why”

Vincent Amari — Wed, 11 May 2022 08:56:28 GMT

hi Alex Nassi

Sorry to tell you this, but that is the main page, not the link I reported which is this one

https://sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/engage/b/sugar-news/posts/9-steps-to-a-successful-crm-go-live
but that one also seems fixed now by going here

https://sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/ll/f/conversations/5055/9-steps-to-a-successful-crm-go-live

Thank you very much

Vincent

RE: Knowing your “Why”

Alex Nassi — Tue, 10 May 2022 16:44:18 GMT

Sorry about that Vincent Amari! It was working properly on https://sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/adoption/w/adoption-framework/452/get-started#DefineYourVision, but I grabbed some extra characters when i pasted it on this post. I fixed the link above in my previous reply. Please try again 🙂

RE: Knowing your “Why”

Vincent Amari — Tue, 10 May 2022 16:38:45 GMT

hi Alex Nassi
still getting Page not found
is it working for you?

RE: Knowing your “Why”

Alex Nassi — Mon, 09 May 2022 17:47:15 GMT

Vincent Amari - Sorry about that. I just fixed the link. Here's the correct URL: sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/.../9-steps-to-a-successful-crm-go-live (fixed May 10)

RE: Knowing your “Why”

Vincent Amari — Mon, 09 May 2022 10:45:01 GMT

Hi @brieanne,

The following link is broken.
sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/.../9-steps-to-a-successful-crm-go-live

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.

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!

RE: What are your tips for great CRM adoption?

Jana Ferguson — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:18:52 GMT

Hi Francesca,

That's great advice! I agree that it's so important to empower end users to share their perspective. The goal is for them to get the most from the tool and use it everyday, so their input is invaluable in ensuring the system & processes are set up in such a way that facilitates their regular use.

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

Jana

RE: What are your tips for great CRM adoption?

Francesca Shiekh — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 22:44:59 GMT

My biggest recommendation is: Give the end users a voice before, during and after the implementation.

Involve users in the discovery, find out their current pain points, show them how those pain points can be addressed.
Never lie, and never overpromise.

Keep them up to date on what is happening, where the project stands. Have them test the system as you go.
Pick a charismatic representative from the user base and leverage that charisma.

And after go-live follow-up with your end users regularly, one on one or in what I call "group rant sessions" you'll be surprised the things that come out when they realize they CAN speak up!

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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