Ask The CRM Expert: Questions & Answers

CRM application upgrade decision checklist based on business needs

CRM application upgrade decision checklist based on business needs

By  William Band, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research 

SearchCRM.com

How do you recommend preparing for a Siebel upgrade? How far in advance should we start, and what are some common pitfalls to watch out for?
The decision to embark on an upgrade for Siebel or any CRM application should primarily be based on your business needs, not a vendor-driven upgrade schedule. Start a dialog with your business users to consider the pros and cons of pursuing an upgrade. Use these discussions to prepare business users for the possibility that an upgrade may be necessary at some time in the future. Make sure IT pursues the upgrade for the right reasons.

Here is an application upgrade decision checklist for "why or why not" to do a CRM applications upgrade.

Why upgrade?

• Gain the benefit of new functional enhancements
• Compliance changes
• Reduce customizations
• Consolidate instances
• Keep options open for service-oriented architecture (SOA) releases
• Synchronize tools and infrastructure releases
• Get relief from vendor-imposed support deadlines

Why not upgrade?

• Applications are mature, enhancements not compelling
• Risk of disruption to the business
• Cost and resource requirements
• Too many customizations
• Plan to switch to another vendor
• Complex integration with other applications
• Vendor-imposed platform requirements
• Questionable future of the product or vendor

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