CRM Implementation In Pharmaceutical Industry

From last year to early this year, I have been in charge of the planning and implementation of the phase I of the CRM project for LP, a pharmaceutical company. Certain points of project management theory were applied throughout the project ,which was a very valuable practice in project management after the learning in the University.In the article, the whole process of the project is reviewed from start to ending. The overall project planning, scope management, communication management and change management are mainly focused on. Meanwhile, two typical problems which should be avoided, and several good experiences in CRM project implementation are also presented. The paper consists of the following contents:CRM's strategic significance to a pharmaceutical company like LP and background introduction of the projectIntroduction on start-up phase of the project, including main preparatory work and overall planning frameworkProject planning phase review, including the definition of project scope, making project schedule and risk control planChallenges and key successes in implementation phase , presenting the important role of communication management and change control in a CRM project.Project summary and project performance evaluationRecommendations to achieve a bigger success by utilizing CRM systemFrom project management perspective,the article focuses on those processes which are more important to IT project to implement business related application. Especially for CRM projects, the author gets the following main achivements:(1) Adopt SaaS (Software as a Service) model to CRM projects. This helps to focus relatively limited IT human resources, time and money on the core business system, therefore ensure the quality of project implementation, and improve the return on investment.(2) Data quality is the most important; poor quality of data causes high failure rate of CRM projects. It is recommended to collect master data from own practice. At the same communication management on sales staff, the most important stakeholders will help to increase their acceptance of the system, therefore protect the reliability of system data.(3) Change control is the most important control process in CRM implementation. The most difficult demands are from the customers. To address this issue, in advance is the most effective way to control, combined with a strict audit system to change.I hope this be helpful to companies with similar size and similar requirements in implementing CRM system.