Microsoft Dynamics 365 Top 10 Best Practices for User Adoption

by | Jun 8, 2022

Establish Goals

The goals for the company leadership should be translated to the goals of the sales organization, and then to the goals of the individual sales people. If an organization knows what leadership considers important as it relates to its customer base, then that information can be collected and reported on. At a minimum, clean contact data will include first and last name, company, email & phone number. As it relates to accounts, leadership may expect a certain level of activity for each account. Examples may include meetings, emails, phone calls, delivery of marketing material, new accounts, accounts with appropriate contacts and similar.

 

Enable users for high performance

Develop and deliver impactful training. Training is critical to adoption, keep your training materials (videos, documents, knowledge articles and more) updated and communicate on Microsoft wave releases as they occur. Be sure all users understand the benefits to the organization and to their own goals that CRM will provide. Listen to feedback from your users. Reinforce the training periodically. Measure and reward users for adopting and using the system. For example, measure the number of activities by user and report out on these metrics. Award a gift card to the user(s) with the highest number of activities. Share success stories, for example, associate sales success with system usage. Make sure users always have someone they can rely on for help.

 

Help your team embrace the new system

Yes, we know: old habits die hard. CRM adoption can be tricky as it often involves a change in organizational culture. According to reports, 40% of employees don’t know what a CRM solution is or how to use it. In the beginning, your team might be skeptical about change, but you need to make sure that all your team members are on board and have the necessary training to use it effectively. It takes time and requires reinforcement until it becomes a habit. The benefits are for the long term.

 

Monitor performance against your goals

For example, if our client’s corporate goal is 40 new accounts per month, and there are 20 salespeople, then each salesperson should have 2 new accounts per month. Measure and report on the number of new accounts per salesperson to demonstrate achievement of this goal, or identify areas that need attention.

 

Maintain Clean Data

When incomplete records (for example, a contact record without an email address and phone number) age, they should be archived/deactivated. What good is a contact record if our client has no means to contact the person?

 

Automate

Once you know your data and the business rules around it, automate your business rules to help maintain the integrity of your data. For example, if the business rule is to archive contact records without an email address and phone number after 6 months, implement automation to achieve this.

 

Keep it simple and configure to meet your needs

Require only the data that is absolutely necessary at each stage in your process so that users don’t feel like they are wasting time putting in unnecessary data. Only display fields that are relevant for the users. As an example, a form with 40 empty fields and 3 required fields can leave a user overwhelmed. When fields are required on a form, they should be grouped close together in a logical order. This keeps users from searching all over the form to find the fields for the data they have to enter.

 

Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate!

Listen to feedback from your users. Nobody knows the business better! Engage with them in effective and meaningful conversations. Be flexible; when a user makes a suggestion that cannot be implemented, don’t just ignore it or tell them no. Be sure to explain why their idea can’t be adopted right now. Doing so may help you both come up with an alternative approach that can be implemented to solve the underlying challenge. Also, the user may learn more about how the system works and come back later with a more mature idea. User engagement and ownership of the system translates into higher adoption rates and helps the organization achieve its goals and objectives.

 

Integrate your business applications to rise above the competition

When organizations can synthesize their data and perform advanced analytics on that, patterns can emerge, and greater intelligence can be achieved. Data from multiple sources can help organizations overcome challenges to maintaining data integrity. Rather than maintain copies of data in several systems, integrate to the system of record and surface that truth in a meaningful and useful way for your users. As an example, when a user updates contact information, that data is more likely to be accurate than the same contact information that has been stored in your database for over a year.

 

Focus on Customer Experiences

Too many CRM adoptions struggle due to focusing on the user experience and not the customer experience. Sales people often want to hold on to their contacts as their own. Product owners may not want to share product issues with sales. Sales may not know that a customer is slow to pay. Exposing this customer data across your organization helps users better understand your customers and make business decisions that improve your bottom line. As another example, when Marketing knows your customers better, you can better offer them the products and services that they value, increasing the bottom line for you and your customers.

 

For more information, contact Pamela Beste at PBeste@mailctp.com or Margaret Mundt at MMundt@mailctp.com