Keeping The Torch Burning

13 Aug 2012

After some initial bumps and hurdles, the Olympic Games have come to a very successful conclusion. There were ups and downs, laughter and tears, medals, records, personal bests as well as individual and team triumphs. Perhaps one of the real victories of the games from my perspective was seeing the level of dedication and engagement from the athletes, their support teams, the fans and the volunteers. Beneath the glossy surface of the Olympics you are left with a huge army of ordinary people that put an extraordinary effort into making the whole event a success. Now that the Games are over, where does this leave us? Well hopefully rather than being the end, this can signal the beginning of a new era. The message has gone out to both young and old to let them know that everyone is capable of their own greatness – whether participating in a sporting event and improving their own fitness and well-being, or becoming involved in the running and managing of a sports club or society. Everyone is a cog that helps make the machine work and each person is vital to the bigger picture.

Funnily enough, I see parallels between this and a CRM implementation. Following the planning stages we see the implementation and this is usually a big collaborative project between the customer and different departments here at OpenCRM such as the project management or development. Fields are created, renamed and repositioned, modules are switched around, picklist values created. Data is collected, managed, tidied up and prepared for import. Users are trained and brought up to speed on how to get the most out of their CRM software.

This is the stage where the developers, project managers, admins and CRM champions  – the Jessica Ennis’ and Usain Bolts as well as the Lord Coes of the project – can breathe a huge sigh of relief as they look back on a successful rollout.

As with the Olympic spirit, the important thing at this point is for that energy and enthusiasm to continue rolling forward as the CRM users get to grips with the system, using it daily, learning and enhancing as they gain experience.  Everyone using the CRM software is a cog in the machine, contributing their effort and in return benefitting massively from the collaborative knowledge.

There’s nothing we like better than to see gold medals being won not just in the sprints and short term events, but in the marathons, long term projects and in the many years to come.  Let’s look on past these Games, past the upcoming Paralympic Games and beyond, and see people inspired to make their work lives, their family and private lives an event to be proud of.