Question:
My company has been trying to get MS going for over a year and just cannot get the program to function. The sales force has lost momentum and are going back to handwritten documents for BP tracking. What are your experiences?
Answer:
Hi!
Dependes on the Scope of the implementation.
Basic Functionality such as Account & Contact Mgmt, Activity Mgmt and Opportunity Mgmt can normally be implemented in 3-6 months. As soon as you include Configurable materials and Order Mgmt (with non-standard set-up of Pricing Procedures etc) you often have to add up to another 6 months.
As long as you stick to standard as far as possible you should be able to be up and running quite fast.
The fastest implementation I have seen with an easy set-up was 3 months (including Data Migration and Training), but then again we are talking about a minimum of customization.
Answer:
MS User,
Just curious, but could you give me a ballpark of the per user license fees for MS? In looking at it, the overall implementation costs and associated licenses seem quite high. You are obviously not happy with how the implementation has gone, but what about costs?
Answer:
Fast implementation on a Mobile / Field sales in my book is not recommended. You should allow enough time for issue to arise. (and they will) You have more components and more database you have to maintain with field sales. - com station / cdb / ipc/ laptops - plus if you have a large sales force you will be rolling this out for, you have to logistically plan to have them send in the laptop to be loaded with the client and ipc - if you don't have a process already defined for this it could be a nightmare.
I have seen issues where things have worked in the dev client but moved over to QA and problems pop up. Why, not the same type hardware from client to client. - Mobile by far is the hardest to implement in SAP CRM arena. My suggestion if you have a year use it! If you have only three or four months - scrap the project - cause that will only allow about 6 weeks for realization and that simply is not enought time.
Cost? - depends on how many people you are rolling it out for. I was with a client that paid $5,000 for each license - I am not sure if that is good or bad....I am just a consultant.