5 stages of lettings CRM

 (And How to Survive Them)

If you've ever been through a CRM migration, you'll recognise these stages. If you're about to go through one, consider this a preview.

Stage 1:

ExcitementThe new system is going to change everything. The demo was impressive. The account manager was reassuring. The contract is signed and the team are cautiously optimistic, which in lettings terms means two people said "sounds good" and nobody actively complained. This is as good as it gets.

Stage 2:

Denial. Go-live is three weeks away and everything is fine. The data is mostly clean. The integrations are mostly ready. The training is mostly booked. Nobody is examining the word "mostly" too closely.

Stage 3:

Bargaining. "What if we just run both systems in parallel for a bit?" This feels like a reasonable compromise. It is not a plan. It is a coping mechanism that results in twice the data entry, twice the margin for error, and one operations manager running on caffeine and quiet desperation.

Stage 4:

Despair. There is a contact in the new system that wasn't in the old one. Nobody knows where it came from. It has three appointments attached to it. One is in 2019. The account manager's voicemail is full.

Stage 5:

Acceptance. The system is live. It mostly works. There are things that are slightly different to before and the team has developed workarounds. The workarounds have their own workarounds. This is the new normal and everyone has silently agreed to call it success.

Here's the truth: every migration goes through these stages. The difference between a migration that recovers well and one that doesn't is whether someone anticipated them, and built a plan around what to do when stage 3 arrives.

That's exactly what we do at Russou.

We've been through enough migrations to know where the cracks appear, and we plan for them before they become the story.

If you're heading into a migration and want to skip straight to a calm stage 5 talk to us first.

http://russou.co.uk