How long does it take to implement Pipedrive CRM in a company?

Main phases of Pipedrive CRM implementation

To implement CRM in your company, you will go through the following phases:

1. Defining the need and especially your own processes
2. Setting up the CRM system
3. Importing data
4. Testing with selected users
5. Training of salespeople and other users
6. Setting up reporting
7. Expansion through automations and integrations

1. Defining the need and custom processes

A lot of companies supposedly have this, but I've rarely seen it. Companies think they have definitions ready, but more likely they just know the way things work in the company. And often everyone knows it from their own point of view.

I need to say at the beginning what I want the CRM to do, why I'm implementing it. This is then followed by who will use it and how. In order to set up the system and move on to point two, you need to have a written business process - or simply how the company makes money.

Beware here - the sales director thinks the business somehow works, but then we often find that sales people describe a completely different reality of the deal process. Talk to the salespeople.

This process takes 1-10 business days.

2. Setting up CRM Pipedrive

Setting up a CRM can be a short process, but can take days. This is where it's a good idea to use a Pipedrive CRM partner - for example, Dáváme, as the largest Pipedrive partner in Central Europe. A partner can set up your system without finding dead ends. At the same time, they will know exactly how to use Pipedrive in your case and will teach you.

You can also set up Pipedrive yourself. If you want advice on what you need to set up and what you should have, here's the bare minimum:

• Setting up a pipeline - here we recommend a maximum of 7 stages and a maximum of 30 deals per stage.
• setting up custom fields for deals, persons and organizations - for persons make sure to make the address in 5th fall, it will be useful, for organizations make sure to add the ID number
• activity settings - you can probably get by with a call and a meeting or a task, other activities can be deleted so they don't get in the way
• setting the reason for the loss of the business case - don't add the option "add other" here
• synchronisation of the account with email, calendar and possibly contacts

For larger teams, don't forget the different permission options and also different settings on the dashboards for teams from different countries or different departments of the company.

This part takes 1-5 working days.

3. Importing data

In Pipedrive there is an option to import data either from another CRM or via an excel/csv file. The import doesn't take much time on its own. Before the actual import, you should do your own homework - clean the imported data. The idea here is - not to have duplicates, to have the correct data for the people and companies, to import business cases correctly, to have products ready and more.

The import will take a couple (tens) of minutes. But data cleansing is often an activity that takes days or weeks.

But some companies start from scratch. In that case, you can skip this step.

4. Testing by selected users

In some cases, companies test Pipedrive among a select few users before rolling it out to all the salespeople in the company.

This approach has the advantage of helping the selected person learn Pipedrive, get first-hand experience, and know how to lead and close a deal. At the same time, it will help with customizing the system before the actual launch for everyone.

Once all the traders get access, you need to have a tweaked usage so you don't have to retrain them over and over again. The person or persons selected will help in this. Other people are then also trained by these selected ones.

Some companies skip this step and run it straight through for everyone.

Testing by selected users usually takes 2 weeks to 2 months.

5. Training for salespeople and other users

Training usually takes a few hours to 1-3 hours. Pipedrive is very intuitive and people are guided by the interface itself to use the features. But here we recommend having both a training video for new traders and a paper manual on how to use Pipedrive ready.

This way, all salespeople have a proper understanding of the CRM and use it to its full potential.

If you have other users in Pipedrive (customer support, account people, finance people), you need to follow the same steps as for salespeople - including uploading a video and creating materials on how to use the system. This will save you a lot of hassle and nerves.

It takes 1-3 days to create the materials.

6. Setting up reporting

Reporting is an essential part of the Pipedrive CRM. Thanks to it, you can keep track of the company, the business and the salespeople themselves. It is useful for management meetings as well as regular meetings between salespeople and the sales director.

I cover setting up reporting in the webinar - I recommend you watch it.

And as for setup - creating dashboards is a matter of 1-2 days. But what takes the longest is the actual data collection. That's why we recommend setting up reporting no sooner than 14 days from the start of usage, but we often don't set up reporting until 2 or 3 months after all users have used Pipedrive.

7. Expansion through automations and integrations

This point is normally followed only a few months after the start of Pipedrive usage. Thanks to automations, a lot of activities of a marketer can be saved. This gives more time for the actual trading. As far as integrations are concerned - Pipedrive is not all-powerful and does not offer some features that other systems have. Pipedrive only focuses on what it is best at - Customer Relationship Management. Other applications can be integrated with Pipedrive. These are mainly tools for invoicing, project management or creating quotes and contracts.

If you need help getting Pipedrive into your business, contact us. Or you can try Pipedrive yourself.