Hi All,

I am new to business analysis. I would like to share approach followed by me in requirement gathering of CRM for my company.

Step 1:

My question to CIO was, apart from CRM what all system will our company have and what will be there purpose and what broad functionalities are we trying to achieve out of CRM.

His answer was CRM, Billing, ERP for inventory and document management system.

Result:

This helped me in identifying broad scope of CRM and where CRM needs to interact with other application.

Step 2:

During my discussion with my CIO, Sales Head and Customer relationship manager I discovered that CRM will have 4 major modules:

1) Installation and Activation of customer

2) Call center

3) Lead Management System

4) Business and Service partner Registeration

5) Reports

Step 3:

I started with understanding detailed scope of  Installation and Activation module and then took sign off from Business User. For this discussion I interacted with sales and operation head.

Step 4:

I identified the 2 level of business user associated with Installation and Activation module. One at manager level and other who works at ground level.

Step 5:

I started understanding requirements of both business users. Documented functionality as text and then prepared a functional prototype. Next day I use to have a review sessions with business user. This helped in identifying new functionalities which business user never thought of.

Then I got into preparing use case with bifurcation as User action and system response. Mentioned business rules with each use case. As I was running on strict timelines I did not have time to prepare functional requirement document.

Please note I already had a process document from business user associated with different functionalities.

Step 6:

Our technical team performed further design analysis and implemented the application.

My feedback on this approach:

I captured all functional requirements that business user could think of, however, as I did not prepare functional requirement document so there were certain business rules that were misinterpreted by developer otherwise project was a 80% success.

I would recommend that ideally we should also prepare system requirement document for 100% project success.

Please share your feedback on this approach and negative feedback will be welcomed J.

Kimbo,

I forgot to add that process documents related to all modules were prepared and shared  by Business User during early stages of Implemetation.

However, during my discussion with business user for each action I use to ask him how and why atleast 3-4 times to understand business needs and its objectives.

Please share your inputs about how to have a business point of view for an existing process. What sort of discussion I should indulge in with business user. Based on CRM I implemented recently, I have been recommended for another CRM project and I don't want to repeat my past mistakes.

Regards,

Nitin