I have both built and reviewed a fair number of budgets in my time. I’ve done this for clients, former employers, as well as organisations where I was the treasurer.
In recent years as an IT consultant for the Not for Profit sector, most of the budgets are for software implementations. And from what I see, most organisations have a massive budget omission.
What is this massive budget omission? It’s the cost of a CRM business administrator.
Your Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) is usually the most important and expensive software in your entire application architecture. It contains the most important details about your stakeholders, whether its members, donors and/or clients.
Increasingly, your CRM is also vital to the delivery of your services and interactions with stakeholders.
For these reasons, ransomware attackers purposely target CRMs because they know their importance to your mission.
And despite this, few organisations have an assigned business administrator for their CRM (not even as a partial role).
What’s a CRM business administrator?
Some of their functions may include:
- Identifying and documenting the changing business requirements for the CRM;
- Configuring the CRM to meet the specific needs of the organisation;
- Training and supporting users on how to effectively use the system;
- Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the data stored in the CRM;
- Analysing system data to identify trends and opportunities for improvement;
- Managing and overseeing integrations with other business systems, such as marketing automation platforms; and
- Monitoring and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the CRM, such as customer retention and campaign conversion rates.
Most stakeholder-facing managers would see these above tasks as important for their departments’ success, yet few of them budget for such roles.
Instead,
- CRM system training is left to the person exiting the position (if they’re lucky);
- Configurations are done in an ad hoc manner or not at all until something breaks;
- Documentation hasn’t been updated since the original implementation;
- Users are frustrated that they can’t get the information they need out of the system; and
- Staff are often burdened with unnecessary manual processes due to a lack of integrations and/or know-how.
So, what is the cost of a CRM business administrator?
Like anything, it depends.
Most organisations can meet the requirements within an existing FTE job description if they are prepared to invest in ongoing training. Of course, there is also an assumption that the assigned individual has both the natural skills and interest to take on these duties.
For full-time roles in popular software like Salesforce, you will likely pay $100k+/year in salaries.
Is a CRM business administrator worth the expense?
Again, it really depends. If your CRM is essential for generating tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, the answer is likely yes.
If you’re a smaller organisation, you may be able to outsource the work to a CRM contractor who can provide you with this service as needed.
Or consider the investment in your internal resources as suggested earlier.
In conclusion…
In reality, many Not for Profits will consider a CRM business administrator as a “nice to have” role. However, if you consider the importance of your CRM in generating revenue and delivering your services and communications, the business case may be much stronger than you realised.
The first step is to do the evaluation to know how much value a CRM business administrator role might bring to your organisation.
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT and data decisions.