It has long been discussed that one of the critical elements of CRM success is adoption. This reality is nothing new or even original, but a recent article published by CIO Magazine titled “Why Do 70% of CRM Projects Fail?” addressed many reasons which still boil down to adoption. We believe automating document creation can insure adoption and help companies avoid many of the pitfalls that plague the failed 70%.

The technical or sales reasons may describe other factors for failure, but at the heart is lack of adoption. CRM solutions with proven best practices have been around for many years, but why do so many companies still fail on adoption?

Let’s start by assuming a company is committed to all the basic elements required for CRM success. So then, what technology component has been missing to help CRM acceptance? The answer is document automation.

Document Automation
Automating document creation impacts every aspect of a business team – from sales reps to support reps to managers to executives. A commitment to automating document creation will identify missing fields, missing business processes, missing work flows and other critical elements required to achieve enterprise-wide CRM adoption.

Quality of Data
Ironically, sales people tend to be risk takers and are often open to try new things. However, they can also be the guilty party when it comes to the quality of data within a CRM. Bad data can kill any CRM solution. Think about the impact on the quality of CRM data if all document creation (sales proposals, quotes and contracts) had to be generated directly from your CRM? Any errors in data or missing information would be captured and fixed at the time of document creation, and therefore, improve the quality and accuracy of your data. No more “after the fact” data entry by sales reps, or worse, the “I forgot” to enter all of the required information mistake.

Usability
CRM usability requires ease of use. We believe ease of use must also translate into saved time for sales and service reps. By automating document creation, you have created an incentive to enter the correct information on a Lead, Contact or Opportunity within the CRM because the user understands that all he or she needs to do at the end of the process is click a button to create the document or set of documents required to complete the proposal, quote, or sales contract.

Integrate Document Creation into Your Sales Methodology
We are amazed at how many companies have spent countless hours on solutions, activities and work flows around what drives closing and renewing business, but virtually no time evaluating how document creation should be incorporated. Combining document creation with other sales methods is extremely powerful. For example, a company could capture critical prospective customer data on a web form and then have the submission of the form trigger a work flow to create an outbound email message with a customized document package automatically attached.

Training
By incorporating document creation into your CRM Solution, you can more easily train users on processes and work flows. Again, if a user must update required fields in your CRM to close the sale or renew a service, you have insured CRM adoption.

Business Intelligence
Marrying your CRM solution with document creation will improve your business intelligence for managers and executives. Automating document creation now allows you to incorporate other work flows, integration with other services like e-signatures, and delivery of key data back into your CRM. For example, you may be using calculations in Excel to capture profit margins or other internal metrics that you want to store back in your CRM for every sales proposal generated. This becomes possible through complete document automation.

Our Recommendation
Take the time to add document creation to your CRM solution and allow Drawloop to help you gain 100% adoption.

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