3 Top QA Strategies to Ensure Successful CRM Implementation

Attracting, nurturing, and retaining customers are critical success factors for any business, with nurturing and retaining customers resulting in five times lower costs and higher revenue (25%-95% with a 5% increase in retention), according to Forbes. In today’s complex business environment, systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are the backbone for lead nurturing and building long-term relationships that support your growth. Now, you may ask, what is the role of QA in all this? Implementing a CRM system is not as easy as it seems. Hence, today, we’ll discuss the three top QA strategies that help ensure successful CRM implementation.

The more efficiently companies do CRM, the more they grow. That’s because CRM software effectively manages each stage in the conversion process and encourages repeat purchases.

While CRM software is the solution, CRM implementation requires companies to follow multiple steps, like creating workflows, data migration, and integration with other systems. All these require heavy testing to ensure that the system works perfectly as expected. In this article, we will explore these topics along with the top QA strategies you must adopt to ensure a smooth and successful CRM implementation.

The role of QA in CRM implementation

Most people understand QA more clearly when it’s discussed during the development phase, as it assures that software performs as intended, is bug-free, and is stable. However, for a system like CRM, implementation is also complex enough to warrant a separate QA process. Most companies new to using CRM do not typically dedicate a QA team to testing the implementation, potentially resulting in problems down the road. That’s why forgoing QA during the CRM implementation process is a bad idea. A dedicated team of QA staff is essential to ensure that the system is configured properly and is producing the precise results that contribute toward reaching your goals.

If you overlook this need for QA, you’ll waste a lot of time fixing errors, some of which might not be found immediately, and face challenges when the users start using the CRM software to build and maintain relationships with your customers. When errors occur during actual usage time, it wastes everyone’s time, stops the workflow, and interrupts operations until the issue is resolved. Having a dedicated QA team ensures all these challenges have been addressed during CRM implementation and the system is ready to be used for daily operations without any hassles.

QA elements in CRM implementation

Testing the CRM implementation successfully requires three parts to be tested individually. Those are:

• Workflow validation: This checks if the business processes are correctly mapped in the software.
• Data quality: This ensures that the data is migrated correctly from legacy systems and is accurate.
• Integration testing: This tests the software’s integration with other tools and software, like marketing tools, ERP, and support tools.

Once all three of these QA elements of testing are done, the QA team can show a green flag to the CRM software, approving it for real-time usage.

Workflow validation during CRM implementation

Workflow setup in CRM implementation includes mapping all the business processes with the system and ensuring all the steps in the workflow execute correctly. All these processes and steps are mapped with an automated workflow that spans different stages in the customer relationship management, like marketing, sales, and services. These steps may involve triggering the right operations, required approvals at each stage, and executing the automated rules. A QA’s role in this stage is to validate that all the triggers and automation rules work as intended.

A QA strategy should also simulate real-world scenarios by creating leads and tracing their progress to the next stages, and verifying if the system produces the right actions or not. E.g., from lead generation to customer interaction, to recording customer details, to final conversion. Each operation must be tested individually to detect any flaws in the system and thereby make the necessary changes in the configuration.

Data integrity during migration

If a company has chosen a CRM software to start working on, that means so far, they were operating on legacy systems. The core part of using CRM software is data migration from those legacy systems to the new software. The whole business operations depend on the accuracy of the data and thus, it must be performed with utmost care. A QA’s job here is to test if the data migration has been precise or not.

Once the data migration is complete, a QA team will cross-verify the source and target data to check the data accuracy. They do a field-level check to know if each fields are mapped correctly in the new software, as it was in the legacy system or a spreadsheet. Any duplications or redundant data found must be cleaned up as part of the data sanitization practice that ensures the data is “clean”.

Integration testing

CRM software rarely operates in isolation. They are mostly integrated with different tools of the teams they cater to. These are marketing, support, and customer success tools. These integrations are a little complex and require thorough testing before the software can be put into use.

Integration testing’s first step is to test the API connections between different tools. If the calls are executed perfectly, and if the data is exchanged properly. Any broken link may cause systems to fail to communicate with each other.

Automated rules and triggers often require other systems to act at specific times. Integration testing should check if all these triggers are working properly, e.g., test automation for Salesforce checks if the approval emails are sent correctly to the expected address.

Conclusion

CRM systems are often the most crucial part of the business because this is where you can actually see the journey of customers being converted. The products, services, and processes you made all serve this final purpose of converting the customer. Hence, CRM is the locus of attention for any business, both from monitoring and operational viewpoints. Since so many eyes are on it, it should be able to operate, integrate, and generate the desired results for all the sources.

If CRM stands at the center, a QA’s job is to ensure that it works perfectly well. The QA strategies discussed in this article show how you can get the CRM up and running right from the moment you purchase it. Once you ensure all parts are working fine right at the beginning, the later stages can be completely focused on its operations rather than facing any more glitches. This is not just a user experience enhancement but a business enhancement too, once you ensure that the bloodline of the business is flowing smoothly and perfectly.

Need marketing help to support business growth?

We welcome the opportunity to show you how we can make your marketing SIZZLE with our data-driven, results-oriented marketing strategies.  Sign up for our FREE newsletter, get our FREE guide to creating an awesome website, or contact us for more information on hiring us.

Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.