Last week I described why I felt a detailed set of business and functional requirements was essential to a high pay-back CRM project. Over the course of the next few posts I intend to set out some thoughts on how you can go about creating them.

The ‘big’ point in terms of this post is that you need to be clear about what problems you are trying to solve or what compelling outcomes you are looking to achieve. This may sound fairly obvious, but I see a lot of CRM requirements documents in my travels, and very few of them have clearly stated business goals.

There are three reasons why I think being explicit about your outcomes is important. Firstly, it acknowledges that you understand that technology is a tool. It won’t produce value on its own. It needs to be used in a coordinated way to produce results, and there are many and varied ways in which CRM technology may benefit your business.

Secondly, without a clear objective to guide your project from the outset it’s unlikely it will unintentially generate value. Thirdly, unless you can convey the benef