CRM Implementation Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for a crm implementation project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of deploying a customer relationship management system to improve sales and service.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On a crm implementation project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a CRM Implementation project
CRM Implementation projects live or die on deploying a customer relationship management system to improve sales and service. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how crm implementation projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
CRM Implementation-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail crm implementation projects:
- Poor data quality on migration
- Low user adoption
- Integration with existing tools
Example
On a real crm implementation project, the lessons learned would be shaped by deploying a customer relationship management system to improve sales and service. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — poor data quality on migration, low user adoption, integration with existing tools — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.