business case gauravdadhich_12810027

Business Case Implementation of CRM for Placements Team, IIT Roorkee

2013

Gaurav Dadhich DoMS, IIT Roorkee

9/6/2013

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Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027

Table of Contents 1. Introduction: ................................................................................................................................... 3

1.1. Project Name: .......................................................................................................................... 3

1.2. Project Team: ........................................................................................................................... 3

1.3. Project Description: .................................................................................................................. 3

2. Background and Problem Definition:................................................................................................ 4

2.1. Why CRM for Placements Team for DoMS, IIT Roorkee ............................................................ 4

2.2. Market Study across placement teams of other colleges: ......................................................... 5

3. Measurable Organizational Value (MOV) ......................................................................................... 6

3.1. Financial Benefits: .................................................................................................................... 6

3.2. Strategic Benefits: .................................................................................................................... 6

3.3. Operational Benefits: ............................................................................................................... 6

3.4. Customer Benefits: ................................................................................................................... 7

3.5. Quantifying MOVs: ................................................................................................................... 7

3.6. Framework for evaluating implementation: ............................................................................. 7

4. Analysis of Alternatives: ................................................................................................................... 9

4.1. Total Cost of Ownership: .......................................................................................................... 9

4.2. Total Benefits of Ownership: .................................................................................................. 10

4.3. Financial Analysis Used:.......................................................................................................... 11

4.4. Chosen Alternative : SugarCRM .............................................................................................. 11

4.4.a.1. Economic Analysis: ..................................................................................................... 11

4.4.a.2. Total Cost of Ownership: ............................................................................................ 12

4.4.a.3. Total Benefits of Ownership ........................................................................................ 12

5. Recommendations: ........................................................................................................................ 14

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1. Introduction:

1.1. Project Name:

CRM implementation for the Placements Team, IIT Roorkee using Open-source CRM Package.

1.2. Project Team:

The team shall primarily consist of:

a) Steering committee: The members of this particular committee include project

sponsor, and the project manager. Project Sponsor would be 2nd Year Placements Team

along with the HOD whereas the Project Manager would be a single technology oriented

guy from the 2nd Year Placements team itself.

b) Technical/Implementation members – A group of 3 people from the 1st Year batch, 3

people from the 2nd Year batch, each having >2<5 years of IT development and

Implementation experience.

c) Consultants – Members of both the 1st and 2nd Year batch having more than 5 years of IT

Experience across multiple IT development and implementation projects and 1 member

each from the 1st and 2nd Year Media Cell Teams, IT faculty

d) 3rd Party shared web hosting and domain name provider

e) CRM package provider and their support team

f) Financial Consultants: Fund Managers of 1st and 2nd year batch

1.3. Project Description:

The project is all about implementing CRM package for the placements team of DoMS IIT

Roorkee to manage the large number of industry contacts that have been forged and

maintained over years in traditional spreadsheet software. The project covers various aspects

like evaluating the best open-source and free CRM package for the purpose and choosing the

correct one, implementing it on commodity shared hosting services with minimum

customization, redesigning the placements team processes to be able to use the CRM and draw

value out of it, etc.

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2. Background and Problem Definition:

Placements team of DoMS IIT Roorkee handles a large volume of contact data from various industries

across the country. Often, there are multiple contact people in the same organization. Each of these

contact persons has a different set of personal attributes like Name, Contact Details, Designation, last

conversation, etc. Currently all such data is stored in the form of MS Excel spreadsheets. It is

cumbersome to store all this data in one place. More so because each member of the placements

team is handling a pre-defined set of companies and hence the status of discussions with various

companies are stored locally at different local machines of the different team members. If they were

to upload all their files to a single online directory, they will still have to manually manage file versions,

etc. Also, there is no backup mechanism.

Moreover, there is no easy way of monitoring that a new company with whom contact is being

established, is not already being contacted by another team member, with either the same contact

person or another contact person.

Also, when preparing the schedule for guest lectures, Pre-placement talks, Placements, etc; there is no

or poor visibility in terms of talks and commitments from the companies handled by other team

members and there is no unified way of handling the same.

2.1. Why CRM for Placements Team for DoMS, IIT Roorkee

A CRM provides with the fundamental benefit of having a single database system to store the

entire customer (prospective companies) and thus helps in providing a single view of the data.

a) CRM uses a single data storage for storing the entire data, providing a single unified view

of the data

b) Easy to maintain data backup

c) Easy access to data from anywhere at any time

d) Authorization and access control to the data

e) Easy storage of multiple contact persons per company/customer

f) Easy maintenance of log of each conversation with the customer

g) No hassle of uploading excel sheets and syncing

h) Easy switch-over of customer/ company from one team member to another

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2.2. Market Study across placement teams of other colleges:

The placement teams at some of the top B-Schools use a CRM implementation to manage all

their contacts and company databases. This is what helps these B-Schools manage their

corporate relations effectively and efficiently. It helps them approach companies with up-to-

date data and shows a time-saving and professional approach of the B-Schools towards

companies. Effective and efficient communications with the companies help B-Schools establish

a strong relationship of trust and respect with each other. Hence, it is extremely essential that

DoMS IIT Roorkee also implements the same.

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3. Measurable Organizational Value (MOV)

By implementing a CRM application, the placements team wants to integrate all their operations in a

manner that will help them have better control over all their outgoing and incoming company

communications.

3.1. Financial Benefits:

Implementation of the CRM will streamline the process of maintaining communications with

the prospective employers and will show the following financial benefits:

- Elimination of losses due to poor planning of Corporate Interaction visits to various cities

- Elimination of losses due to inability to follow up with an employer at a pre-scheduled time,

due to lack of reminders and/or poor visibility.

- Elimination of losses due to buying contacts from data vendors that we already possess

3.2. Strategic Benefits:

- Removing the one-to-one mapping between company and team member by allowing for a

smooth handover at any point of time. Such handovers are often required due to conflict of

interest, schedule issues, unavailability issues, etc

- Snapshot view all the companies possible for better decision making

- Data available in single database and hence easy to perform analytics to make key strategic

decisions

- Better control and monitoring over all the activities for the HOD and the Officer-in-charge

Placements by means of their individual dashboard views

- Ability to easily categorize organizations of various types on various criteria like package slots,

day slots, industry domain, location, profiles offered, etc

3.3. Operational Benefits:

- Easy to enter and maintain data in a CRM than in a spread sheet

- No fear of entering duplicate data because of in-built redundancy checks

- Ability to maintain complete log of all the conversations that has happened with multiple

people in a company. This helps in better context and enables better handling every company

uniquely.

- Since the entire data is always online, it can be accessed from anywhere at anytime

- No missing of scheduled calls, follow-up calls, follow-up mails, etc thanks to the ability to

apply alerts based on various rules. Also, custom alerts can be applied.

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3.4. Customer Benefits:

- Companies do not maintain all the conversations that they have had with a certain

college(since they have a lot of colleges to handle), but if the college is able to provide the

same, on demand, company’s job of understanding the context becomes easy.

- Companies get better services from the placements team in terms of on-time delivery of data

requests, on-time follow ups, etc.

3.5. Quantifying MOVs:

In order to calculate whether the project is successful or not it was very essential to find out a

quantified targets which will be achieved with the help of this project .So in this case we have

calculated the measurable organizational value for a period of 5 years and have formulated

certain targets which the project is supposed to meet at the end of 1yearto become a

successful project. They are:

- The implementation of the CRM package should give a rapid pay back, in 12 months

- The implementation should also provide a very good return on investment based on

substantial cost savings and business value creation as compared to continuing with the legacy

systems

- In addition to the compelling economic benefits, the implementation is viewed as strategic,

helping companies increase competitiveness, improve business agility and predict IT costs

more accurately

Tabulating the MOVs:

Objective Change Factor Time

Rapid Payback Time 12 months

Higher Productivity Increase by 20% 2 months

Reduced default rate Decrease by 15% 2 months

Reduced turnaround time Decrease by 10% 2 months

Increase customer satisfaction Increase by 20% 2 months

Reduced data redundancy Decrease by 15% 2 months

3.6. Framework for evaluating implementation:

An intuitive framework for evaluating the cost savings, business value and strategic benefits for

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implementation was developed for this case. This framework includes four key elements:

- Implementation cost analysis

- Post-implementation cost savings analysis

- Post-implementation business value improvement analysis

- Post-implementation strategic benefit analysis

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4. Analysis of Alternatives:

Now, since this CRM implementation is to be done for a very specific purpose and the project is low

on funds but high on in-house resources that can carry out a successful implementation themselves

along with some industry help and professional support, we have chosen to go ahead with an Open-

Source CRM Package. Such packages have free/community editions that can be installed by

institutions like ours for non-commercial usage.

However, we need to choose the correct Open-Source CRM package that provides all the features

required by us and is easy to implement and maintain and has low operational costs. Hence, we

have to evaluate and choose from among the following:

Name Technology Ease of

Installation Support

Free

Tutorials

SugarCRM LAMP Easiest Community & Professional Available

Splendid CRM Microsoft Stack Complex Professional Only Available

Centric CRM Java and MySql Easy Community & Professional Available

Hipergate CRM J2EE Fairly Complex Community & Professional Available

Compiere CRM Java and Oracle Db Easy Community & Professional Available

4.1. Total Cost of Ownership:

- Planning Costs : Planning costs can be calculated in the terms of all the person-hours required

to initially plan the implementation, model the data, scope the project, etc

- Implementation Costs (Internal) : Implementation costs can be calculated in the terms of

person-hours that will be required to actually install the software on the hardware, configure,

customize, install associated plug-ins, testing the system, etc.

- Implementation Costs (3rd Party) : These costs include the costs of implementation support

from professional installers that might be required in the case a certain technological issue is

encountered that cannot be solved by the community edition.

- Hardware Costs: The shared hosting server is to be purchased from a reliable and reputed

web hosting provider who has guaranteed uptime of at least 99.9%. It should be a Linux or

Windows web hosting server, depending upon the CRM package we choose. The shared

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hosting server incurs a recurring cost every year.

- Training Costs: Training costs includes all the person-hours required for the core team to learn

the usage of the CRM and also additional costs if training is required from a 3rd party trainer.

- Database Licensing Cost: Cost of licensing the database if we go for a proprietary database

system. However, most alternatives of CRM run on any database and hence the open-source

MySql database that is by default installed on a Shared Hosting server will be easily available.

- Facilitation Costs: Costs like coordination costs between team members, food/tea/coffee

during the extra work hours, flat stipend for all participants at the end of the project (as a token

of appreciation from the class), associated travel costs, etc

4.2. Total Benefits of Ownership:

The savings or the benefits which the placements team and the class will receive because of the

CRM implementation can be classified as:

Cost Savings line items Business Value line items Strategic Benefits line items

Operating time costs Better chances of conversion

of prospective employers in

to employers

Ability to see the relationship

with a prospect over the

years

Synchronization time costs Improved coordination with

prospective employers

Ability to maintain effectively

all the corporate relations

data for the future batches

Reduced turn-around time Ability to deal each

prospective employer with

greater attention and

detailing

Can have a single unified view

of all the prospects

Reduced time to ensure data

consistency

Ability to perform analytics

on the data to draw insights

and plan better relations

Easier reporting to stake

holders

Easy to handover

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responsibilities

4.3. Financial Analysis Used:

Here we are using the Return on Investment Method to calculate the ROI and from this we

calculate the payback period also:

Project ROI = (total expected benefits – total expected costs)

Total expected costs

Payback Period = Initial Investment

Net Cash Flow

4.4. Chosen Alternative : SugarCRM

SugarCRM has been chosen for the following reasons:

- Most popular and reliable open source CRM in the market. Implemented by companies like

Starbucks, etc

- Easy to implement since installation, configuration and other documents readily available on

wiki. Additionally there is a one-click installation available with the Simple Scripts plugin on any

Linux web hosting provider that has cPanel as its control panel.

- Easy to configure and customize.

- Implementation team has people with exposure to SugarCRM at both design and

implementation level

- Easy to maintain

- Based on easy to use LAMP architecture and hence can be easily customized

4.4.a.1. Economic Analysis:

The following analysis provides a summary of the return on investment and expected

breakeven based on implementation cost/benefit analysis over five years. The results are based

on the net present value (NPV) of the cost and benefit cash flows over the five year period.

Based on an average five-year implementation cost of $1K, with an average implementation

length of 5 weeks from initial planning to production deployment, the team cited substantial

cost savings and business value drivers, yielding a total five-year benefit of $0.375M. This

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results in a five-year Return on Investment (ROI) of 375% and a payback of less than 6 months

from the completion of the migration.

4.4.a.2. Total Cost of Ownership:

Particulars Amount One time / Recurring

Planning Costs 28 person-hours One time

Implementation Costs

(Internal)

80 hours One-time

Implementation Costs (3rd

Party)

10 hours (max) One-time

Hardware Costs (Shared web

hosting + domain name)

Rs. 10K/ annum Recurring (per annum)

Software Costs Rs. 5K/ annum Recurring (per annum)

Training Costs 40 hours One-time

Database Costs Rs. 5K/ annum Recurring (per annum)

Facilitation Costs Rs. 5K One-time (Cumulative)

Maintenance Costs 30 hours (since the hardware

is outsourced)

Recurring (per annum)

4.4.a.3. Total Benefits of Ownership:

Particulars Measures Benefits

Elimination of loss due

to inadequate follow-up

with prospects

- 1 company/ month –> 12 companies/ year

- Assuming half of these companies would

have offered atleast 1 profile at the average

package amount

- Rs. 45 lakh / year

(in terms of

packages)

- 6 students (in

terms of careers)

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Savings from not buying

duplicate contacts from

data vendor

Assuming 5% of all the new data purchased is

already available with us.

Rs. 2250 / year

Savings on productivity 12 team members of both year placement

teams lose on an average 4 hours/month on

productivity without the benefits of the CRM

48 person-

hours/month

Improved brand value of

the MBA Program in

industry

A student driven initiative when employs sophisticated technology

to streamline their internal processes, it sends strong message to

prospective employers about the quality of the students studying

there, improving brand value.

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5. Recommendations:

Since Placements Team at DoMS, IIT Roorkee needs to implement a CRM to manage their corporate

connections and prospective employers better, an open source CRM package viz. SugarCRM will be

the most appropriate. Apart from the use of implementation, configuration, customization and

support, the Project Team also comprises of members who have prior exposure to SugarCRM and

hence will be able to control the implementation better.

The analysis in this document clearly points out the benefits that can be drawn out by

implementation of such a system at a relatively marginal cost. The ROI will be achieved within 3

months and the long-term benefits of this project are numerous. The successful implementation of

this project will put DoMS, IIT Roorkee among the elite set of B-School around India that employ a

CRM for their connections handling and will enable better placements. Taking all these points into

consideration, we strongly recommend that this project be implemented starting immediately.

business case gauravdadhich_12810027

Technology

iit roorkee

prospective employers

total cost

total benefits

placements team

project manager

project team

benefits