Choosing a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that’s fit for purpose and seamless, along with all the other business terminology used to define longevity and success, can be challenging. What is the strategic advantage? What architecture does the business have and how does the new CRMfit within it? What features and services are essential to your business strategy and planning, and which platform provides these the most effectively – both in terms of cost and usability? Ultimately, your choice of CRM comes down to the features you need, the reliability of the platform, your business strategy, and the value it will deliver to your organisation over both the long and the short term.
Answering these questions may lead your company down the road to Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement platform as it is highly agile, customisable, and capable. Secure and feature-rich, it includes modules and toolkits designed to support companies across multiple industries and niches, plus it comes with high levels of innovation and support in the form of Microsoft’s commitment to R&D.
The decision to make the move is easy. The challenge is undertaking it, which is where this best practice list of steps, tools and planning steps in. Here, we unpack some of the most common questions, challenges and concerns faced by companies as they migrate from Salesforce to Microsoft.
01: Why bother with the move?
Considering how meticulous and time-consuming the move can be, it is absolutely essential your organisation has clear line of sight into the Why. Both platforms offer superb tools and have their own unique pros and cons. Before you start with any form of migration, this is where you have the strategic conversation and ensure that the pros of the move far outweigh the cons.
Some of the biggest benefits of Microsoft include:
- Agile and customisable customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities
- Effortless integration with tools and products throughout the Microsoft ecosystem which improves user engagement and reduces the barrier to entry
- Costs are easy to manage and control
- Scalable and customisable to suit the size of the business and its requirements
02: What about the data?
Your data is your gold mine, your fuel, your IP so before you make the move, ensure data is clean, deduped and ready to transfer so you aren’t lifting and shifting legacy errors or poor quality datasets. It’s worth taking the time to go through the data to find and remove any potential problems and to work through different fields so you can create datasets that are organised, clean and ready for migration. This process will ensure you have quality data and line of sight into where your data is stored, what policies shape its management and extraction, and what conditions are potentially causing your data to corrupt or introduce errors.
03: What’s moving into the new system?
The planning stage is critical as here you not only prioritise your data needs (as outlined in point 02 above) but what specifically you are planning to move into the new CRM, who will be involved in the migration, the date of the migration, and how your system will be implemented. At this point you should be working closely with your systems integrator to ensure you have visibility into the following questions:
- Who are the key stakeholders involved in the migration and what are their roles and responsibilities?
- Is there a deadline – what needs to be done prior to, during, and after the migration to ensure this deadline is met?
- What type of migration path will you take to ensure the process is as simple as possible?
- Have you ensured you’ve optimised your workflows correctly as this is an opportunity to reimagine them completely and ensure you get all value possible from your new CRM system.
These are just some of the questions that you need to answer before the new technology even sets foot in your digital doorway, and they are the ones Mint can help you answer from the start. In Part 02 of this series, we dig even deeper into questions companies ask about this migration, but if you want more answers faster, get in touch with Mint today.
