| Implementing a new CRM | IT 205 WEEK 8 |

5/16/12 |

When it comes to the IT department putting in a new CRM (customer relationship management) solution there is a lot of work involved. There are 5 major variables in managing the hardware replacement, scope, time, quality, cost and risk. All of these things need to be evaluated. Being the project manger it requires a lot of change and work to get the new CRM working properly. Project manger duties include planning the work, assessing risk, estimating resources required to accomplish the work, organizing the work, acquiring human and material resources, assigning tasks, directing activities, controlling project execution, reporting progress, and analyzing the results so that the project manger can make a good decision on how to go about the work for this project. There are very important tasks that people have to do like, managing the time that was allowed to complete the project, the cost of the project, and getting the results that you should be getting from this new system. These five major variables during implementing of this system scope, time, quality, cost and risk. All of these variables must be balanced when you are in the planning stage. You must consider the results of what you want out of this project and have realistic estimated of what can be done to reduce the risk to this project. The time and the scope must be adjusted to stay in line with the cost of the project. If you can meet the scope, time quality, cost and the risk you should be able to meet the project needs on time and on budget.
The scope defines things that are not included in the project at first but are realized after the fact of the matter like, training of the people that will be working with this new system, and all the extra equipment that might be needed to get everything working like it should. It is the projects manager job to ensure all of these things come together to ensure that it is done right so the system works properly. The time is referring to the time that it will take to complete this project. The project manger is the person that needs to take everything and look at it to decide how long it will take to complete all of these tasks. They also are the person who is in charge of keeping every task on time so they don’t fall behind when it comes to completing the project at hand. There is always a time crunch when it comes to projects and getting more time can be very difficult so it is very important to stay on time or ahead of schedule. The quality refers to is the finally result of the project. The project manger must look at all of the work that is being done to ensure that the quality will meet the results of what they want for the final result of the project. Keeping everything up to the right quality is very important on keeping everything thing else on schedule. The cost is a very important thing important thing. It is what makes a big company do a project like this. If the cost is the right level it will be worth the company do it, and if the cost is too high it will not make sense for them to do it because the cost will be more that it can make them back. Along with that all the other variables can affect the final cost of the new technology. Risk is another important part of doing any project. There is always risk when it comes to doing any big project and the project manger needs to look at all the risks and do their best to try to minimize them by changing things and adjusting things along the way to keep the risks as low as possible. Risks can make a big difference when it comes to the completion of the task and con affect all other aspects of these variables. There are many things that will influence the risk factors that are associated with this project. I think the first thing is making sure everything is in order so when the new system is put to work that everything is working together right. You must first consider thing that you have done in the past that you know works and have experience using like certain ways to do things (processes) different approaches. Having a good team to help bring everything together is one of the most important aspect of getting projects done on time and at the cost that you need it to be done at. Another risk factor that is associated with doing projects like this is user acceptance. People rejecting a new system are a big thing that the project manger needs to address also. If the system is not easy to use people will not like it because in the first place a lot of people don’t like change and then if it’s not use friendly the people will not want to use it at all. Making it easy to use and getting people properly trained is a big factor also.
When it comes to stagiest that I would use to help with this project. The first thing that I would do is to make sure that everyone that is going to use this system are properly trained so that they know every part of this system, how it works, what it does to help the company, and how to be able to fix little glitches when they occur so they don’t have to call a IT guy everytime there is a problem. To make it work you must have people with the knowledge of the system to make everything work. The other thing that I would do is to make sure that I have the right person in charge of the project. Having the right person to keep the project on track is a major factor. The project manger is the glue that holds everything together. They make sure people have what they need to get the project done, they make sure that the project stays at the right cost and stays on time, and they makes sure it get done and it gets done right. Without the right person running the show it can go very wrong very fast and that cost time and money to fix.
So in conclusion having the right people in place, and having the right tools for those people to use is a must when you want to get a project done on time and done at the price that was set to get it finished at. People are who make things work and keep thing working so they are the most important factor out of the whole project.