Pulling the Plug on your CRM Project

Dears,

Pulling the plug on a CRM project is never an ideal outcome, but sometimes it’s necessary. The indicative signs discussed in this article may indicate it’s time to end or postpone a CRM project. No IT pro wants to be part of a failed CRM Project; unfortunately, some IT projects are beyond saving and need to be killed. The key is to know when to end YOUR project.

In my experience , I’ve observed important signs that indicate a CRM Project might need to be axed or put on hold until more information is available, better requirements are defined, business structural changes are made, or the personnel getting in the way of progress are no longer part of the project. By recognizing these four signs that a CRM Project is in trouble, you’ll save valuable resources, which include your time.

 Scope creep

During the planning phase, you realize the customer has a very different idea about the defined CRM Project — the customer expects “x,” and you plan to deliver “y.” Sometimes this issue starts during the sales process and isn’t glaringly obvious until the skilled resources who truly understand the solution sit down with the customer to plan out the implementation. This is where the tire meets the road (often for the first time), and the customer says, “Wait, that’s not what I was told by Presales or Sales folks” or, “I was told I could have this for free, and now you’re telling me it’s a 2000-hour effort?” When this situation cannot be resolved through negotiation, you’re at a stalemate. It’s likely time to call off the CRM Project or shelve it until clear and decisive plans are made. Important Note, This sign should not be confused with small disagreements that might occur when the line in the sand is drawn in terms of CRM Project scope.

There are many conditions and situations where a business legitimately changes its requirements after starting a CRM Project. If the CRM Project no longer provides meaningful value, then it’s best to stop throwing good money after bad. On the other hand, some organizations deliberately obscure a flawed CRM Project requirements process by claiming business needs evolved. Obviously, that’s unhealthy and a true sign of failure.

 Resource Churn

If constant turnover on the customer’s project team is causing schedule slippages, missed tasks, budget overruns, and lags in making major decisions, you have a major issue on your hands. It may be time to stop work on the project and force the customer to make some key go/no-go decisions about the remaining work on the project. Remember, Before the blame falls to the delivery CRM Project team and to you as the project manager, you should document the changes to the customer team.

Uncertainty

Customer priorities and infrastructure changes can cause future phases of a CRM Project to come in to question. It’s nearly impossible to keep your expensive project resources intact while the customer takes two months to make decisions about future CRM Project phases. This is usually a good stopping point to give the customer a chance to regroup and figure out if and how they want to spend the rest of their project dollars. You might, however, be able to implement part of the project solution now.

If the organization shifted direction without good reason, thus making the CRM Project superfluous, then flawed strategic planning was the culprit. However, if business requirements changed for a good reason, as suggested in point one, there’s not necessarily a problem. In general, and this is an obvious point, canceling projects without a darn good reason is a definite sign of failure.

Funds Exhaustion

Promise anything to get funding and worry about the consequences later. Shortsighted managers don’t realize that funding is less important than delivering substantive value. Failure is inevitable when managers don’t clearly identify and deliver business value.

In some cases, the CRM Project really did provide value, which the organization did not recognize due to communication problems. Many organizations take a CIO for granted when his IT department consistently delivers the goods without fanfare and attention; sadly, this human failing is all too common. In that case, PR might be a great idea, especially if the CIO isn’t a great communicator. Of course, the CIO should improve his communication skills, but that’s another story.

A CRM Project is in serious jeopardy when the funds run out. If the project budget is depleted, it might be due to increasing demands that were made outside the original spec; you might be able to breathe new life into the project if the client is willing to change the original orders. If the client isn’t willing to make those changes, you aren’t left with many options. Most project managers cannot afford to work pro bono, so you might have to end or delay the project until more funding is available. For the sake of the article, I’m assuming it’s not the project manager’s fault that funds were depleted.

On the surface, over-budget projects are the basic metric for failure. I’m actually surprised this number isn’t higher, because unanticipated cost is always such a clear red flag. At the same time, some projects run over-budget due to intelligent scope increases that provide additional value. For example, while automating two Sales departments, the CRM Project team realizes it can add a third department for only marginal increases in cost. In such cases, going forward is probably the right decision despite the higher spend. Although tempting to use budget performance as simple metric of success or failure, that approach can be overly simplistic and ignore important nuances related to business value. Nonetheless, anytime a project goes over-budget the team must offer a detailed explanation.

Final word-Review your contract

Before telling the client that it’s not in either of your best interests to move forward with the CRM Project, you should read your contract again. You definitely don’t want to pull the plug on a project that could end up costing you lots of money in litigation.

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