Follow-the-sun organisation with legacy on-premises CRM system in use across many non-CRM use-cases decided to upgrade to cloud CRM solution. No requirements in place at start of project. Product Ownership for the new system sat with Sales. No organisational responsibility for the supply chain to the customer at any senior level (it had ‘just worked’ for years). Special security requirements. Legacy system functions were undocumented and extensive; organic mission creep over many years had resulted in the “CRM” system doing everything from quoting through traditional CRM to invoicing and provisioning of product keys, as well as being the master data bus.

I ran the global programme to rip out and replace the legacy system with Salesforce CRM, managing various external suppliers and internal contributors including 2 director-level reports. Challenges along the way included churn in senior management (Head of IT Change role changed hands 3 times / had 4 incumbents during those 12 months) as well as those described in situation.

Decided on Agile because we needed to work with the capabilities we had. Planned outline of programme over the following 12 months. Negotiated some deal elements with Salesforce and BigMachines (Configure Pricing Quote supplier). Identified organisational shortcomings (lack of anyone above 1st line support dealing with customer supply chain), and influenced to fix that at C* level. Identified security shortcomings for key German supplier and led discussions with German legal experts to identify route forwards. Managed Sales directors to get requirements into Agile delivery on a timely basis. Hired & led project managers as required to spin up small projects and releases throughout the programme.

The programme was successfully delivered on time and to budget. The organisational hole was filled. There was no down time beyond already agreed maintenance windows across the globe for the entire follow-the-sun model and absolutely no customer impact at any time. The legacy system was retired, and the replacement CRM system was focused on its proper purpose, with appropriate system choices made and executed to replace the other non-CRM functions throughout.