Kick-Starting CRM Discovery in Covid-19
At JRF we’ve taken a closer look at our objectives to check they still make sense in the context of a global pandemic — we want to ensure our work is relevant and still working towards solving UK poverty. But when it comes to digital transformation work, it can be difficult to show the value of these development projects when the world is changing around us at such pace.
Thankfully there’s an understanding across JRF that we can’t take our foot off the gas when it comes to this kind of improvement work. It’s vital we meet our goals and people’s raised expectations while designing and delivering the best possible service we can to our users.
And if anything, the fact that we’re all working remotely and relying on new ways of working highlights the importance of development and transformation projects — they’ve been flung in the spotlight like never before.
But my area of focus within JRF’s digital transformation is quite a tricky one in the current climate. I’m looking across the organisation and investigating our needs and requirements for a new CRM or the improvement of our current one. I’m keen to broaden out that brief though: how do we transform how we collectively manage contacts and relationships at JRF? And how do we do it by connecting a series of people, systems and processes to effectively and efficiently achieve our outcomes?
Despite the distance and restrictions Covid-19 has put upon us all, answering a question as big as this needed a lot of people and hell of a lot of chat.
Going broad
In a classic double diamond approach, we decided to broaden things out with an interactive digital workshop, which aimed to gather viewpoints from across the organisation to understand how we currently manage contacts in all areas of JRF. We wanted to begin understanding the organisation’s needs so we can transform and strengthen our approach to stakeholder engagement.
To achieve this ambitious goal we felt it was important that we re-framed the discussion from ‘what system do we use?’ to ‘how do we manage relationships?’ and ‘how do we make our users’ experience of our services our priority?’ This was so we could hopefully avoid assumptions about our needs and be user-centric in our approach. By looking at it through this lens we hoped to establish our end point from a cultural perspective, helping us discover how we want to work and ultimately create a shared vision for the project.
What did we learn?
An eye opening two hours later and we had gathered a bunch of great insights — doing sessions like these are always so rewarding because you learn new perspectives and have your assumptions challenged. By simply asking a series of questions (here are the questions we used if you’re interested — thanks DXW Digital!) and getting people to fill in virtual post-its, we were able to gather different perspectives really efficiently. Here were my main reflections.
JRF has a wide and valued network
I’ve worked at JRF about a year now and it was immediate from the start how important our networks were to us. From our network of grassroots organisations working directly with people in poverty to our political contacts and everything in between, it was clear from the workshop we truly value these perspectives and insights, but above all the amazing people who have them! Framing the conversation around our users really brought this to light, and I’m excited to get cracking on this project to ensure we give these groups the best possible service we can.
It’s all about culture
These sorts of improvements and transformations are always about people and culture. I’d already done some reading around CRM discoveries and every single one forewarned that too much of a focus on technology can distract you from the real problem space. Although there was still a temptation to talk about systems, the structure of the discovery session managed to pull out this aspect, especially when we explored assumptions and challenges.
A strong theme was the concern that people wouldn’t use the system, that the intended users wouldn’t see the value and that we would continue to work in silos. This signals to me that I’ve got a lot of work to do in terms of creating a plan for this project that celebrates milestones and quick wins! But most importantly, that at its core this is project about collectively establishing a culture of connectivity and openness around managing our relationships and contacts.
Have you introduced a new CRM into your organisation? How did you go about discovery? And how did you come at the problem so that it was human-centred rather than technology focused?
If anyone has any thoughts on how to stay connected with people on a project like this when you’re not in the same office, I would also love to hear any thoughts!
Please do comment below or get in touch with me at hannah.mcculloch@jrf.org.uk — I’d love to chat!
