Chapter 2. Planning Your CRM Implementation

Obviously, you are now convinced your organization will be in a better position to accomplish its mission using CiviCRM. This chapter will help you plan your implementation of CiviCRM so that your Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) initiative has the best chance to achieve greater organization success.

In this chapter, we will do the following:

• Identify potential obstacles and challenges to success and learn how to overcome them
• Introduce background on development methodologies
• Build a project team
• Get started by measuring baseline metrics, creating a vision, and creating a plan
• Itemize elements of a good implementation plan
• Review how to calculate the total cost of ownership of CRM systems and their alternatives

This chapter is aimed at people who have the responsibility for initiating, scoping, and managing development and implementation for the CRM project. The first several sections of the chapter are very IT management-oriented. The material on improving constituent relationships is often non-technical, and not specific to CiviCRM. We have written it to primarily address executives, directors, and managers at medium and large-sized organizations. Personnel in smaller organizations should also benefit, though they may need to scale down the suggestions to better fit their organization resources and goals. For readers who are technical and/or do not have managerial or executive responsibilities, these sections should provide a good context for your work, and may help you advise managers and executives who do not have experience with CRM strategy development and implementation.

The latter parts of the chapter focus on identifying your organization's requirements for CRM functionality in different areas such as communication, membership, fundraising, and events. These sections are intended to help with brainstorming techniques that could be a part of your organization's overall CRM strategy.

Of course, you might be a semi-technical person who's trying to solve the database problem, at a small non-profit, with a three-member staff. If this sounds more like your situation, then the initial parts of this chapter may provide inspiration on where you would like to aim, while the latter parts will provide useful ideas and suggestions that will be more immediately and practically relevant as you plan your work.

If you are already using CiviCRM, but feel it is not linked to a strategy or vision, you might want to use this chapter to get some ideas.