CRM Consulting and Implementation Best Practices
DSG's founders and senior CRM consultants have been implementing CRM since it was called SFA and ran on client-server architectures back in the mid-90s. Successful CRM implementations depend on your business achieving a fine balance between meeting the needs of the entire company and ensuring that the sales people get perceived value from the solution and therefore buy-in to the CRM implementation. Here are some other CRM Consulting and Implementation Best Practices that we're learned along the way.

• CRM Doesn’t Exist In A Vacuum - it impacts finance, manufacturing, product fulfillment, service and support, and your partners. Sales people know this and, because most are pragmatists, they understand that whatever is in the business’ best interests is in their best interest as well.
  
  
• CRM Only Succeeds If Salespeople Use It - remember that salespeople aren't usually early adopters of software and the more of their time that a solution demands, the less successful it will be. Look for a CRM consulting firm that will help you balance capturing the information and enforcing the processes that you need with maximizing your sales team's adoption of the solution.
  
  
• CRM Needs to Add Time to the Sales Day - find the best way to help your salespeople do their job more easily—adding value to their day instead of more work. CRM Solutions that try to tell people how to do their jobs or require burdensome data entry will fail.
  
  
• Don't Over-Engineer Your CRM Solution - many companies try to capture more data than they will use and implement overly rigorous processes thereby compromising user adoption. Automate information capture as much as possible, limit the amount of data entry to expect of your salespeople and keep your processes as flexible as possible.
  
  
• Choose a CRM Consulting Partner with Deep Sales Process Experience - not only technical expertise. While every business is unique, those within the same industry have common requirements. With years of experience across a wide range of vertical markets, DSG can deliver the benefits of our knowledge and lessons learned.. We can propose alternatives, suggest new approaches, help you avoid common pitfalls, and get the most functionality for your solution spend.
  

ERP Consulting and Implementation Best Practices
DSG has implemented ERP solutions that address virtually every business process or functional area, including ordering, billing, shipping, inventory, financial reporting, project accounting, incentive compensation, revenue recognition, and employee self-service applications. When you are considering an ERP implementation partner for your business, take advantage of our deep ERP consulting experience and implementation best practices, such as:

• The Right Functionality - be sure that the proposed solution delivers the right level of functionality for your needs: too much and solutions become cumbersome to use and users fail to adopt them; too little and you'll be skimping on capabilities that pay off in long-term efficiencies and benefits. We can help you identify the features you need—and the ones you don't. We view your investment like it's our own money, so you spend on what you need to achieve your goal without creating solutions that users won't use and you can't maintain.
  
  
• Existing Processes Must Adapt to the New Solution - DSG recommends the ERP solution that will deliver the results you want. However, every customer finds that they must adapt their existing processes to some degree to fully take advantage of powerful new features. We won't turn your world upside down, but we will help your users learn new features, develop new workflows and integrate capabilities with their current processes.
  
  
• The Same But Different - while every business is unique, those within the same industry have common requirements. With years of experience across a wide range of vertical markets, DSG can deliver the benefits of other clients' experiences and lessons learned. We can propose alternatives, suggest new approaches, help you avoid common pitfalls, and get the most appropriate functionality for your business.
  
  
• Choose an Implementation Partner with Financial and ERP Consulting Process Expertise - in these days of stringent compliance and regulation, technical proficiency with a software package is no longer enough. To be successful and to manage implementation risk, you need a partner that understands the rules of accounting and financial management and understands the end-to-end ERP processes.