Every company that is newly invested in CRM usually has at least one CRM champion: someone who understands the value of the software and actively promotes its use.

But it’s also true that many others within the enterprise may not share the champion’s enthusiasm. The end users—sales people, marketers, the folks in the call center—are not always part of the purchase decision and they may be reluctant about (or openly skeptical of) the company’s CRM initiative. Winning over these users is a challenge for many organizations.

Promoting user adoption across the enterprise is at top of mind for me these days for a couple of reasons. One is simply that I’m developing a presentation on the topic for an upcoming conference, CRM 2010. But aside from that bit of shameless self promotion, I’m also thinking about user adoption in the real-world context of several new customers that we’re working with.

It is true, especially in these days of cloud computing, that CRM software requires less setup time and can be put to work by the customer more quickly than ever. But what can fall by the wayside in that rush to run the software is the requisite training, support and reinforcement of best practices for users—all of which are key elements that drive user adoption for the long-term.

Here at RunE2E, we pride ourselves on a rapid delivery process. But I also think it’s important for our company to infuse that process with tools and support to help our customers promote ongoing and widespread user adoption.  In essence, we should strive to create teams of CRM champions throughout the enterprise. Because that’s how our success will ultimately be measured, and how our customers will derive the greatest value from their investment.

Those are my thoughts for now. In a future post, I’ll share some simple tips from my presentation that companies can use to encourage CRM adoption.