A Stalled CRM Rollout, Recovered.

THE CHALLENGE

Not A CRM Problem. A Brief Problem.

A German media group had completed the technical implementation of a major CRM platform six months earlier. The system was live. Licences were paid. Training was delivered. But adoption had collapsed - sales staff were back in spreadsheets, finance had stopped trusting the dashboards, and the executive team were quietly preparing to write the deployment off.

The platform was not the problem. The implemented processes were a mess. Customer records had been mapped against optimistic assumptions about how Sales actually worked. Reporting reflected the wishes of an unaligned strategy meeting from twelve months prior. The CRM was a victim of its own brief, not its architecture.

The internal CRM team was capable - they had delivered the technical implementation on time. But they were caught between three internal stakeholders, each pulling the spec in a different direction, and three vendors who pointed at each other. The board needed an answer in a quarter, not a year.

THE APPROACH

Digit Concept Against The Existing Platform. No Re-Procurement.

run-e ran a Digit Concept engagement against the existing CRM. We did not replace the platform. We did not write a single line of integration code. We delivered the artefacts the customer's own CRM specialists needed to execute properly.

Stakeholder interviews - sat down with the people closest to the operation: Sales, Finance, ad operations, subscription management. Where decision rules were stable, we recorded them. Where they were contested, we surfaced the contest and forced a decision.

Process mapping, an authoritative customer-record specification, a validated and prioritised backlog, and single-page strategic-alignment artefacts the executive team could agree on without re-opening the question every fortnight. The original CRM platform stayed live throughout - no second migration, no re-procurement, no board-level reset.

THE OUTCOME

Adoption Recovered. Investment Rescued.

• The customer's CRM team executed flawlessly. Armed with a clear backlog and aligned stakeholders, the in-house CRM specialists delivered the integration and process work themselves. No second vendor relationship to manage.

• Adoption recovered within the quarter. Sales staff stopped using parallel spreadsheets. Finance started trusting the dashboards.

• Stakeholder alignment held. The strategic-alignment artefacts continued to settle disputes after run-e left the engagement.

• The CRM decision held. No platform change, no re-procurement, no second rollout cost. The original investment was rescued, not redone.