CRM is designed keeping in view the market requirements of different clients. So once designed, it is used among different clients with some customization. The problem that is mostly faced is not all the requirements can be fulfilled or required by all clients. So this may result in compromising with the CRM used for business. Consider a common example of a date functionality provided by the CRM system. For example a company was established 10 years ago and CRM is allowing the dates to be used for an event or meeting held etc that is more than 10 years old for that specific company. Also for one company the user Date of Birth restriction is 30 year old, while for the other its 35. Capturing these requirements that are the company policy becomes difficult sometimes to maintain and fulfill. The CRM should be designed in a way so that each and every aspect can be customized as per the clients’ requirements. This will help in setting up the companies goals and make the CRM works keeping in view the company policies.
CRM when not tested properly may result in loss of money if failed to fulfill the company policies and requirements. For example a system may have different groups of roles with restriction on performing specific tasks. A common problem that arises is the access of restricted user over the area where he has limited rights to perform operations. In most of the cases with generic CRM this issue comes to be very common for a client. Each role of the client should be checked for the rights of performing operations. This ensures that the user has no access to the area he is restricted for and also to ensure that the user has rights of performing operations s/he is authorized for. An available access to the un-authorized users over the restricted areas of the system may result in complete disaster and destroying company reputation and policies.
The CRM may or may not be compatible with all the platforms. For example a CRM is designed for a set of users using a specific platform. Lets say it works for some clients on the same platform and for the clients who can switch between the platforms. But what about the clients who have some of the functionalities dependent on one specific platform and are unable to switch? In such case the CRM if not tested for their requirements may result in complete disaster.
Other issues that may be faced is the Performance measures like Response Time, Through Put, Round Time and Hits per Second. The Performance measures vary with the requirements of the clients and needs. The performance of the system may be excellent for one client but it may behave very badly for others. In case of web based CRM the number of users accessing the system for each client will vary and may result in maintaining the required functionality. Performance is a very important aspect that cannot be ignored keeping in view the requirements of user using the system. The performance of the product varies as the number of users vary. So it is important to test the product for evaluating its performance behavior for each client.
Some companies are more interested for using more secured system that uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) standards to perform business operations, while some don’t care in most of the cases depending on the nature or type of data involved. CRM some time captures the requirements of both clients and provides plug-ins that can be enabled or disabled depending on the requirements. Keeping in view the privacy and data confidentiality issue, it is important to check the system for Security that is a very broad and an important aspect for any product. Confirming that the system is saved from the un-authorized access ensures that the security aspect leads to beneficial results.
It is important to test the product as soon as it is configured for the use. An early testing can save a lot of money in terms of development cost, new resources that may be required. It may also prevent from loss of data, improper and inaccurate data retrieval and avoiding un-authorized user actions.
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