80% of CRM deployements don't acheive 'operational' status

Overview

The most disciplined corporate giants fail to plan adequately, as do small, inexperienced startups. Take Nestlé Corp. as an example. A few years ago, Nestlé implemented a company-wide ERP project that renovated everything from accounting to CRM. Overconfident, management threw the switch on the new system and simultaneously pulled the plug on the old one. The results were catastrophic. During the critical Halloween season, customers were unable to place orders. Nestlé lost a staggering $700 million in sales!
Simply put, 80 percent of businesses fail to heed the proverb, “Proper planning prevents poor performance.” So before you install new CRM software and junk your current system of handling customers, take time — a lot of time — to plan an open-source CRM software implementation down to the last detail. Below are two checklists to help you do just that.
Open-source CRM solutions require some extra steps in the planning process. These packages, like SugarCRM and opentaps, are very popular because they are completely customizable and just as powerful as other, typically more expensive CRM solutions. But open-source CRM software comes with support issues, quirks, the possibility of uneven quality and other pitfalls for which you should plan. And the ability to modify code can be an opportunity to add needless complexities and interfere with effectiveness if you haven’t thought through the modifications.