Customer Relationship Management

Almost 1 in 3 CRM implementation struggles due to the way Non-functional's were dealt in Requirement Engineering (RE), System design or Post-Implementation. Both Functional and Non-functional requirements are decisive factors in ensuring the success of a CRM application. But most of the CRM implementation focuses on the functional aspect of the application with less or no focus on the Non-functional arena. So the Non-Functional requirements are dealt in a reactive manner without having proper consideration for them during the system architecture or design resulting in system availability, performance or usability issues and sometime even security vulnerability. These issues not just causes dent on business operations or operational user confidence but also impacts customer experience. Needless to say a CRM application can only contribute to the corporate objectives if it is available, useable and supported.

In the contemporary organization, CRM systems are the face of it; just few minutes of downtime or few hours of performance issue can cost millions of pounds to business and also leaves bad taste on the customer. Non-functional is one of the key factors in determining the success of any CRM implementations. Unfortunately, it is most badly dealt aspect; the major reasons are:

• Flawed Presumptions; Non-functional will not have impact on the system development cost or timelines
• NFR are often subjective, interactive and relative, thus realizing the need for particular NFR is by itself a challenge
• Functional requirements of a CRM system can be effectively modelled through the use case driven approach, but there is no standard or de facto method for modelling non-functional requirements (NFR) of the system architecture.
• Unlike Functional aspects of the application Non-functionals requires a continuous focus and robust process/framework post implementations as well (during InLife stage as well).

In addition to the business impact or revenue loss, a badly dealt or an ignored NFR can significantly impact system development or even shoot cost of ownership. For instance, lack of clarity on data retention period or archival solution for an operational CRM system can significantly shoots the data storage cost there by impacting the performance and cost of ownership. Similarly, during the Solution architecture stage if the Maximum concurrent end-users or Maximum of concurrent transactions are not accounted while determining the Hardware it may result in under capacity which will cause severe performance issue after Go-Live and will result in low user confidence or acceptance.

Usability requirements also plays pivotal role in user or business acceptance of the CRM systems. For instance, no. of clicks (or no. of screen required navigate) to complete business transaction will have severe impact on the user behaviour and will result higher call handling time for contact centre users which again consequence itself with higher TCO and low ROI.
 
To conclude, functional requirements describe the behaviours (functions or services) of the system and a non-functional requirement defines constraints and qualities. Qualities are properties or characteristics of the system that its stakeholders care about and hence will affect their degree of satisfaction with the system. i.e., Non-functional aspects are the one that will define effectiveness of CRM application as - Good, Bad or Ugly. Most organisations are increasingly releasing the importance of the Non-Functional aspects and there is renewed focus on Non-Functional both during the Implementation and InLife. Some of the least and key Non-functional qualities or attributes that requires focus in ensuring Good CRM applications are:

• Security
• Usability
• Availability & Reliability
• Performance
• Maintainability