Training can be one of the most intimidating a challenging parts of the integration of a new CRM. Let’s face it, this can make or break the success of the project.
But why do so many organizations get this wrong? Lack of asymmetric thinking in my opinion leads to this uncreative and predominantly lax approach to what should be a front and centre concern for project teams.
Let’s face it, without the users being nurtured through the training and initial use of the CRM system, it is going to be hard to successfully hit reasonable ROI goals.
Let’s take a look at some of my key issues that make training a failure when deploying a CRM.
You didn’t follow any form of training model.
Training a user group on a serious business system like a CRM involves a great deal of complexity. Major system upgrades and implementations mean major upheaval to the way users approach their work, and technology training should facilitate all users need to embrace those changes. “Users ought to feel snug with change—they need to recognize what’s happening and how it affects their role,” an idea the training community refers to as “organizational readiness,” coined by Begley.
“Project teams don’t generally take into account the structure of readiness within individuals as a part of the coaching. What they generally look into is “building ability.” This provides an opportunity for users to resist with ease.
In a similar vein, skilled firms with refined end user training like RWD and Sentia stress the importance of formal learning models—that is, best practices for teaching completely different types of learners—as vital to a coaching program’s success.
Organizational readiness and learning models are outside the scope of what most would take into account general CRM development team acumen, however in line with Begley and alternative training professionals, for a serious educational program to be a hit, it must be supported with some formal approach.
Standardization in training materials is another space where project teams usually fall short. Users want multiple reference points for learning a system, notes Intelligo’s Kelley, be it stepwise directions, fast reference cards or Web-based portal coaching. That material ought to be delivered and maintained during a standardized approach.
Your training is way out of context.
The trainer must perceive the business and structure when educating the team. This is where many trainers fall short!
They revolve around the main points of their implementation instead of the entire purpose of getting the key users comfortable and working effectively on the newly inserted CRM.”
The trainers must profile each end user persona to best ensure that their role in the organization is empowered with the CRM. This implementation should be at its core, enriching the business functions it touches, not hindering via the expense of the overall mission.
Gamification is a great way to intimately involve users in the learning process and incentivises their achievements when being trained. This will assist in making the content relevant and encourage healthy competition in the context of the team. Suddenly the relevance of the material is shared due to the gamification scoring and rewarding users in each functional area of the business that is using the system. This is often overlooked or ignored as a strategy to incorporate, even thrown into the too hard basket prematurely!
You forgot to forge business partnerships.
Given that such a lot of what constitutes sensible coaching goes on the way side in the hemisphere of an implementation team, it’s vital that the implementers reach out to all the business functions, not just those with direct end user engagement with the CRM or involved in the use of the system at any capacity. Human resource departments and dedicated in-house coaching teams are obvious candidates for partnerships which will help facilitate effective implementations within the business context.
Reaching into the user community within the organization during the early phases of system implementation is another sensible choice. A phased rollout to “super users” 1st and leverage their feedback and experience to tailor coaching for the remaining users. This super cluster provides an agile platform in which training can be refined whilst iterative design can also benefit from key user feedback in real time.
Whatever the CRM being deployed, the message is most definitely clear: The end user is really a customer of the project implementation team that should be treated as such. Phased, careful key stakeholder engagement is key to the regulated and carefully deployed training and coaching stages of a CRM rollout and stick to the plan.
Use champions within each business function to create advocacy and empower these stakeholders to mentor and help other users throughout the training and adoption phases of the project.
You chose a CRM that is complex and confusing to the end user.
When procuring a CRM to roll out you should always approach adoption issues and training at the head of the snake so to speak.
Some packages and platforms out there are incredibly complicated to operate and require vast amounts of training on counter intuitive interfaces and bulky dim-witted processes to perform simple and core functions.
Sentia has dealt with this issue by building on a usability principle that maintains continuity throughout every function of the sales enablement platform. Think of a car and think of the roads as the navigation and interaction of the system. If you know how to drive and you know the road rules, you can drive on any road, even those you have not driven on. Sentia works very much on these principals as the familiarity of the application does not divert into unknown territory and is obvious, thus making training much more of a simpler task to administer.
To learn more about Sentia and it’s intuitive end user-centric design, check out the Sentia website here.
