Why is CRM adoption still being done after the fact?

I'm amazed to have seen a whole lot of recent articles on how to encourage CRM user adoption once the CRM system has already been implemented! That's like me designing and building a beautiful 10-room thatch house for you, in the mountains, all fully connected to the grid, with the only problem being that you happen to be single, a fisherman, allergic to grass, and that you are a green bean of note! In other words, it's totally inappropriate, and obviously totally unwanted. Then, to pile on the injury, I try and convince you that you really want the house! Indeed, I begin to spend more time talking to you, send you emails, write you newsletters, and even create a vibey TV show, all for you, I mean after all, how can you not like the house? You must like it!

You would never fall for something like this, and yet you expect your internal customers, your users, to fall for it every time! It's little wonder that there are more big CRM failures than there are big CRM successes out there!

Now wouldn't it be better if I had spoken to you first, starting by determining whether you actually wanted a new house? As a result, you would find that there are two answers - yes, you want a new house, or no, you don't want a new house.

• If yes (or even maybe, subject to conversation), then continue
• If no, is there a reason to argue why the current house no longer meets your needs?
• If so, have the conversation, and try to convince you that a new house would be so much better for you - create the burning platform, the case for change
• If not, then simply don't continue at this point in time

Now back to CRM: 

If it makes sense to develop the system, then to ensure maximum buy-in, you must design it with the new owner(s), your user base, your internal customers! Sure, it will take expert facilitation - note there are many so-called experts, and then there are the real experts - to ensure that customer expectations are continually managed in this context, given that the proposed system has already been deemed suitable within the IT architecture of the enterprise. However, by generating buy-in from the beginning, you no longer end up with a product that you suddenly have to hard sell to your customers, even forcing adoption by designing all sorts of KPIs in their performance contracts in the old stick method to ensure that adoption is ultimately achieved, at the huge cost of negative staff morale...

It's interesting that everyone seems to be well aware that the success of a CRM system depends on its adoption, yet so many leave this critical issue as an afterthought! Don't fall into this trap! Ensure your customers know what they're getting, are excited about it, and then let adoption and CRM success follow naturally. Even the system training will attract more attention and enthusiasm if your users have already bought into what you're bringing them.

How would I know? Well, I wrote a case study on the commercial results of the successful adoption of banking CRM across over a thousand branches and three business segments nationally, which I presented from a business context in Halifax, Canada (peer review presentation), and from an IT perspective in Johannesburg, South Africa and in Las Vegas, USA, back in 2008 already. Nothing has changed my view of how to best achieve CRM adoption since then.

Note, all is not lost if it's too late to involve the users in the design and implementation of the system. It's just much harder to do, and requires an altogether different approach to acquiring buy-in! After all, how hard can it be to force someone to like the house you built for them according to your assessment of their needs?