Self Analysis Framework has a good summary of potential measures of success and has a toolkit document. This document helps you look at the quantifiable benefits of CRM, or at least be a good starting point for your institution.
Good Practice would be to categorise assessment of the implementation of the CRM Strategy into: direct measures, outcomes and impacts. This approach may also help with planning the timing of the measurement of the benefits, the more indirect benefits generally being the last to be felt.
Direct measures could include:
Number of system's users, growth in contacts recorded, numbers of different types of activity recorded, numbers of e-campaigns and reach (numbers of contacts on distribution lists). Direct measures could also include the savings made in streamlining business processes.
JISC infoNet have also developed an Impact calculator which helps to assess the benefit of changing business processes.
It may not always be possible to measure the time spent on ‘before’ and ‘after’ processes. Often implementing CRM involves new processes and even spending more time on some aspects than before in order to improve the customer experience.
Therefore assessing the outcomes of the CRM strategy may be more appropriate.
Outcomes could include:
Increased number of enquiries and business projects, improved customer service indicators, repeat business, number of internal referrals that result in business being won, number of cases where business impact of research is gathered.
A CRM system can be designed to manage enquiries, referrals and business projects and facilitate the gathering of customer feedback. The facility to send feedback questionnaires to business clients may be included in the marketing functionality of some systems and there are many on line survey tools which can be embedded as links into emails. Planning the benefits when drawing up the system specification will make measurement much easier. The Learning and Skills Improvement Service holds some advice on CRMS for the FE sector and this document contains advice about the business case for a CRM System and has a list of the potential benefits that you may want to measure.
The overall impact of a CRM system cannot be disassociated from the impact of the CRM strategy per se. Again the aims and objectives of the CRM strategy will indicate what can be measured. There may be internal measures of impact which relate to staff competence and satisfaction. Alternatively it may be possible to use data currently gathered by the institution, such as Higher Education Business and Community Interaction (HEBCI) Survey data, to track improvement.
The HEBCI survey is submitted every year by all HEIs. National information is available by subscription to HEIDI.
This data can be very useful for benchmarking income indicators and comparing your institutions relative improvement in BCE activity with the rest of the sector.
