Looking at the upgrade as a quick and easy software update (providing new bells and whistles) in more cases than not will work from the perspective of updating software bits. While Microsoft has invested tremendous resources to ensure organizations will have as few issues as possible with the upgrade, at the end of the day this is still software, and no two environments are the same. A quick Google search such as, “Upgrade to Microsoft CRM 4.0 or Upgrading Microsoft CRM” will return a number of articles revealing all those hares who have been fast to perform upgrades. Many of these articles are related to either technical issues or functionality related questions resulting as part of their upgrade process. Hopefully most of them performed the upgrade in a test environment and not their production CRM environment – if you don’t already have a test environment, this is your justification and reason for having one.
However, how does this approach impact your users? Customers? Would new features and functionality available in version 4.0 create greater business value for the organization? Increase productivity of users? Impact the organization’s CRM Investment and ROI as a whole? How will you know if you never talk to the users?
The Tortoise
The tortoise of course sees the upgrade as an opportunity to re-engage with users and to determine how the organization can get more value out of the organization’s CRM investment. Isn’t that what winning this race is really about?
This is the time to sit down as an organization and review the business and technical (software and infrastructure) considerations that may impact your organization’s CRM upgrade. The following questions are examples taken from Crowe’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Upgrade Readiness & Planning document which I believe organizations should be asking as part of the overall upgrade approach:
What are the top challenges our organization has had with the current implementation of Microsoft CRM?
Have users fully adopted the CRM application and corresponding processes? If not, what are the barriers?
Have there been any modifications to the baseline CRM databases and application files?
How will the upgrade impact integration with any external data source(s) or applications?
Does our existing application and database hardware meet software and hardware guidelines and recommendations?
Taking time on the front-end to carefully consider answers to some questions like above should not only help mitigate any risk associated with the upgrade, but provide a CRM implementation more fully aligned with your organization’s business.
Closing Thoughts
Having spent the last 5 years as a CRM consultant (specifically implementing Microsoft CRM), one thing I have learned over time, is that an organization’s CRM deployment never really ends, nor should it. Your users, customers and their needs are constantly evolving, and so your use of technology to support your customer relationship management strategy must also continue to change and evolve. There is no better time than with an application upgrade. So the question is, are you be the hare or the tortoise?
