A critical factor in the success of your CRM initiative will be deciding who is on your strategy and implementation team. The size of the team will obviously vary between organizations; those with three staff members will have to do things differently than those with 300. While this section is oriented towards larger organizations, the principles apply to any size.

The implementation team includes the people who will play a direct role in the ongoing project development. Not everyone affected by the CRM initiative needs to be on this core team tasked with driving the strategy and implementation. A good working group seldom is larger than six to eight people, and very often, a smaller group can be more effective. What is most important is that this team should be representative of the different voices of the project—organization, leadership, end users, developers/implementers, important stakeholders, and so on.

Usually, it is immediately clear that the involvement and cooperation of some individuals in the organization will be necessary for the success of the initiative. In addition, it is important to have a variety of people representing different roles on the team. The team members must bring the right mix of expertise and experience to the project, be willing to work together to effectively accomplish what needs to be done, and work in order to ensure that the perspectives and needs of all the affected parts of the organization are heard and weighed appropriately. If you have tight links to external stakeholders, involving them in your CRM strategy development and testing before roll-out can dramatically improve the success of your initiative.

From a human resource perspective, a transformational initiative such as this one is a great opportunity to provide emerging leaders with a stretch assignment for their talent and ambition, experience in matters beyond their current job responsibilities, and exposure across the organization. The senior team members can evaluate and provide feedback to them as they stretch their wings.

As representatives for the initiative inside and outside the organization, the team members are ideally placed with the goal to advocate and evangelize for their own sub-constituencies in support of the overall CRM vision. What do we mean by that? Each member of the team should represent a voice in your organization—management, front line staff, communication, accounting/bookkeeping, event coordination, advocacy, end user constituents, developers, different kinds of external stakeholders, and so on, each with their own expectations, goals, and concerns with the CRM implementation. The combined diversity of perspective is essential in order to achieve a well-balanced and effective team.

You'll need to judge whether people who are likely to be resistant to change, or to the initiative in general, should be brought into the tent early or late. Their opposition or reluctance may be due to their personality, a pattern of conflict with a team member, institutional factors such as loss of control of data or budget, or perceived criticism, as systems and work in their area of responsibility are targeted for improvement. Our experience is that it is usually better to bring them in early so that their voices can be heard and their concerns addressed during the implementation. Obtain their buy-in to the project early in order to reduce the likelihood of them poisoning the perception when it's time for organization-wide adoption. This also makes it less likely that they will be taking pot-shots at the initiative from the sidelines, and will be unable to legitimately claim at their end that their concerns were not given due consideration. Acknowledge and incorporate as many positive aspects from the existing ways of doing things as possible and ensure that there is adequate opportunity for familiarization and training with the new system in order to encourage that buy-in. Skeptical voices are valuable when they help to provide a reality check on optimistic ambitions, but can become poisonous if they veer towards unreasonable negativity.

The ideal team may include:

While not necessary on the core team, it can be quite useful to involve representative users at various points in the process:

Factors to consider while selecting users is to ensure that there is:

The ease of setting up and administering online surveys these days means that you should consider whether it may be more efficient and effective to survey a larger number of constituents, rather than having meetings and testing sessions with a smaller number. The former generally provides better quantitative data on known questions, while the latter provides better qualitative data that can lead to new insights and out-of-the-box thinking.

As you construct your team and consultation/feedback mechanisms, it's important to keep in mind that the best CRM initiatives involve changes to work processes and organizational culture, as well as implementation of new information systems. Communication about the CRM initiative will necessarily occur via your team, consultation protocols, and training sessions, as well as the other mechanisms such as staff newsletter articles that you may want to put in place, particularly in large organizations. The efforts expended on consultation and involvement of staff and volunteers throughout the process can lead to worthwhile results with respect to organizational change, even if few technical changes take place. Your aim should be to develop proper organizational alignment with the CRM vision and objectives, which will help people feel more responsible for things they have contributed toward, approved, and shaped.

As your team and methodology falls into place, consider using a project management tool to help track issues as they arrive, document every step of the process, define milestones and release targets, and keep your team members honest. This is particularly important if you are a large organization with many stakeholders involved in the process. Having an electronic "paper-trail" to reference is critical as you work through the decisions, define specifications, and roll-out the software. There are a number of excellent web-based project management tools that can be used for this purpose.