Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and CRM

This assignment delves into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and its significance in successful CRM system implementation. It examines various SDLC models, emphasizing their suitability for different project scenarios within an agency environment. The document also highlights the importance of risk management planning, incorporating insights from internal staff during the requirement gathering phase to ensure a smooth transition and effective deployment of CRM solutions.

Replacing Manual Customer
Relationship Management Process
with CRM System
Covering letter to sponsor
Dear Sir,
As you may already be aware of overwhelm that our staff is facing due to increase in the number of
orders from our customers. Although, it is a good thing that we are expanding but at the same time,
it has brought many operational challenges for us and there is a clear need to do something about it.
Our current CRM process is old and manual which makes it ineffective and daunting.
Thus, I am proposing development of a new CRM system that would replace our old processes and
would bring benefits of improvement in productivity as well as enhancement in revenues.
Please find attached a project report that analyses the case and illustrates how the new system can
be developed for the benefit of the organization.
Thanks & Warm Regards,
Project Manager.
Executive summary
This project report explains the processes involved in an IT project of an organization which
aims to improve its systems by replacing its old CRM systems with a new CRM system. The
report would explore the objectives of the organization, explain the gaps in the current
system to justify the move and would present a detailed project plan for the replacement of
CRM. The report includes details of schedule, budgeting, software development procedures,
and resource requirements. This report would be useful for any organization planning for a
change in their IT systems for making operational Improvements.
Contents
Covering letter to sponsor..................................................................................................................1
Executive summary............................................................................................................................1
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................2
Background........................................................................................................................................2

Problem Statement.........................................................................................................................3
Aims & Objectives...........................................................................................................................3
Current CRM System & Challenges.............................................................................................4
Proposed CRM....................................................................................................................................4
Alternatives......................................................................................................................................4
Resource Requirements................................................................................................................5
Proposed System............................................................................................................................5
 Customer database management system for the staff to handle.................................................6
 Task management system for the sales people and customer service representatives................6
 Customer complaint management system integrated with the web portal of the organization
receiving complaints and queries from customers.............................................................................6
 Catalogue management for storing and managing inventories of the IT products sold by the
organization.......................................................................................................................................6
Benefits of new CRM system........................................................................................................6
Systems Development Lifecycle approach for Implementation................................................6
SDLC Phases..................................................................................................................................7
Planning:........................................................................................................................................7
Defining:........................................................................................................................................8
Designing:....................................................................................................................................10
Development and Implementation:............................................................................................11
Testing........................................................................................................................................11
Conclusions & Recommendations..................................................................................................12
References........................................................................................................................................13
Introduction
This section introduces the company and explains the problems that company is currently facing
with its manual systems. Based on the current scenario, aims and objectives are defined for the
development of a CRM solution for the organization that is proposed.
Background
In past few years, world has seen several advances in technologies marking the information age.
Organizations have to adapt fast to these changing technologies as they also make changes in the
consumer behaviour and competitive landscape. There are many new applications that have been
developed in past decade for supporting businesses in this dynamic environment. With increasing

use of IT for business and management, manufacturing organizations have also started to adapt to
these changing needs. Companies have made huge investments into their IT systems. However,
there are still several manufacturing and production organizations that still operate on the old
models of manual systems. This, however, poses challenges for them in coping up with changing
demands of businesses. ABC Company is one of the organizations that assembles computer parts to
produce custom machines for business customers and has several assembly lines in India. The
company also sells outside the country to customers present in over 10 different countries. It has a
good market share in India and has increased its customer based multifold in past few years. The
company provides a range of technology products besides own assembled PCs as a system
integrator such as workplace solutions, network security solutions, IOT, Big data, open source
software, analytics, cloud computing, and so on. The company caters to several industries today
including telecommunications, Education, and BFSI (UNSD, 2009). The company is into the
expansion phase and is currently fighting tough competition coming from major players in
the IT system integration space.
The company runs with some major business processes that are supported by some non-
core activities. Core activities of the company involve, assembling or procurement of ordered
products, product or solution delivery, service installation, and customer service. These
activities generate value for business directly. The company also has some more services
that provide support for these primary processes such as IT management, HR management,
security management, and marketing (Deloitte, 2014).
The company has a vision to improve its customer service and make its deliveries faster for
better customer experience. For this, the company is aiming to develop or acquire a solution
that can help management understand the needs of customers to be able to support them in
better ways.
Problem Statement
Currently, the company is using a manual system of maintaining data of customers and
managing communications and interactions with them. However, the workforce of the
company is finding it overwhelming to handle the ever increasing data resulting from new
orders that the company is getting in the expansion phase. The company employees do use
some legacy applications to support their data storage and communication needs. However,
because of multiple small business applications that are individually used for specific
purposes, the company has no uniform visibility into the system such that people from
different departments have to rely on others to get updates and information needed for work.
Thus, the company is planning to develop a seamless CRM that would solve the needs of all
departments and integrate their processes formally for the entire organization (LLPCRM,
2016).

Aims & Objectives
Aim of the project is to build a system that has features to support the current business
trends and demands through increasing employee productivity with the help of an integrated
CRM system. The objectives of the organization are:
 Understanding the current systems and processes used in the organization to
identify possibilities of digitization through CRM
 Collection of all the functional and non-functional requirements of the CRM system
 Developing a CRM solution based on requirements and makes it accessible
companywide.
Current CRM System & Challenges
The current CRM system that is used by the organization is scattered with multiple
procedures followed by people from different departments to maintain the client database.
Standard software like Microsoft Excel and Access are used for maintaining database and
for developing analytical reports to study operations and organizational performance. At the
starting of the business, most projects that the company handled were local but with the
business expansion into other countries, these projects have to be managed across different
locations needing company to manage data of customers from multiple locations. Moreover,
the expansion has increased the amount of data that has to be managed by many folds
which is making it difficult for employees to maintain it and collate reports for management
decision making. The company needs a system that can simplify the work of the company
staff and increase productivity.
Specific challenges that the company is facing currently include:
 There are not enough communication channels that can be used by staff to
communicate internally and with the customers to provide flexibilities.
 The data is huge and there are a large number of files that have to be handled which
makes the work both complex and time consuming for the staff
 The company has no graphical or visual reporting system for management and the
decision makers have to delve through complicated excel sheets to gather insights
Proposed CRM
Alternatives
Decisions on which CRM system to implement would need an organizations to take
decisions about the type of system that would suit best to the company requirements and the

method that the organization would be using for its acquisition or development. CRM
systems available in the market can be analytical, operational and collaborative each type
having some distinctive features. An operational CRM integrates information from multiple
sources to create a single database for the company usage while analytical CRM adds more
value to such a system by analysing this data to come up with establishing of customer
segments based on their behaviour and preferences. A collaborative CRM on the other side
would integrate different communication channels to obtain collated data and improve
coordination between organizational employees. As the key objective of the company is to
make the system more integrated and gain a real time visibility into operational processes,
an operational CRM may be an appropriate choice.
Further, the organization can make a choice between acquiring existing CRM software and
customizing it as per company needs or developing propriety software based on its needs.
As the company has never used any digital system to run its processes, the processes are
complicated and exclusive that would need a high level of customization if standard software
had to be taken which can increase the cost of the organization. Thus, it is suggested that
the company takes a development approach and create custom CRM software from scratch
for the company based on its current structure, processes and customer service
management needs (Mishra & Mishra, 2009).
Resource Requirements
The new development project would have a few requirements that can be related to
hardware, software and workforce (Wesley, 2002). The company would need to employ
developers as the workforce for building the software which would need coding to be done
based on the company requirement. The project would be lead by a project manager who
would be responsible for hiring developers as well as ensuring completion of the project as
per the plan. Further, a sponsor would be needed to take care of funds required for the
development of CRM for the IT organization (UC, 2004). Besides these core stakeholders,
the project would also involve accounts manager to manage funds disbursal and monitoring,
IT manager for taking care of company systems installed during the project, a quality officer
to identify and adhere to best standards of implementation in the industry, and testing users
for testing of the prototype developed. Application and database servers would be needed
as hardware to be able to store the data and use it for the operational purpose. The
hardware would also include personal computers that would be added for the staff and the
networking equipments that would be required for connections (Sands, 2015).

Proposed System
The system proposed is the customized CRM application that would be developed for the IT
organization with the following features included:
 Different login profiles for different set of users including the administrative staff,
managers, sales people, and service representatives.
 Customer database management system for the staff to handle
 Task management system for the sales people and customer service representatives
 Customer complaint management system integrated with the web portal of the
organization receiving complaints and queries from customers
 Catalogue management for storing and managing inventories of the IT products sold
by the organization
Benefits of new CRM system
With the deployment of the new CRM system in the company, the company can expect to gain the
following benefits:
 The CRM processes used in the organization would be more organized
 With the seamless system installed, a real time visibility would be achieved by
decision makers of the organization
 The new system would improve the productivity of the workforce by making
processes faster
 The developed solution would be scalable to adapt to the needs of future in the case
of further expansion of the company (Mishra & Mishra, 2009).
Systems Development Lifecycle approach for Implementation
System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is an approach to manage a software development
project and it involves major stages like designing, development and testing of a software
application. The purpose behind using this methodology is to ensure that the software
designed is in line with the customer expectations and meets the quality requirements of the
product as well as is completed within he planned budget and schedule. The project has a
limited time and the application needs to be developed fast with least impact on ongoing
processes as well as ensuring that the team starts to use the new system fast to save on the
efforts and losses from inefficiencies in the manual system. This a Rapid Application
Development (RAD) methodology would be used for the current CRM application
development and the project would take 90 days to complete.RAD methodology makes use

of an object oriented approach and needs software tools for development. RAD has three
phases of development that including assessment of the requirements, software design, and
implementation. Each phase would use the inputs of users and skills of analysts from
different levels of the organization.
There are a variety of SDLC models that can be used for a software development project such
as waterfall model, spiral model, V-model and iterative model. A right approach to
development can be based on the user requirements, familiarity of the team with the
development process, level of complications in the system, and project management
constraints. Considering the restricted budget of the project and the unfamiliarity of the team
with the development process, an iterative approach would be taken such that most critical
features of the software would be developed in the first iteration and then testing would
happen result of which would be used to improve the software in the next iteration stage.
SDLC Phases
SDLC would have more detailed stages for the development that would include planning
before assessment is done such that the requirements can be defined based on the plan and
assessment in the assessment stage. Post assessment comes the designing stage of the RAD
approach to development. After designing is finished, the implementation stage would
involve building, testing and deployment of the software from the perspective of Software
Development Life Cycle.
Planning:
In the planning stage, the customer service head, sales head, customers, domain experts, and
marketing managers would be interviewed to gather the information on the project
development requirements. The information obtained would be used for studying the
feasibility of the software development from the perspectives of economic, political, and
technical aspects. This would help the project manage take planning decisions that are made
considering the risks that have to be minimized (Franch & Carvallo, 2003).
As the project would use the RAD approach to the software development, the planning stage
would involve identification of key objectives behind development and the applications that
would be used for the development. It would also gather the initial requirements for the
information which would be approved by the key stakeholders of the project. The key
requirements of the CRM projects for the ABC Company include:

 Digitization of the customer database and service processes
 Automation of some of the communication including customer order updates
 Establishing communication channels for coordination between important
stakeholders
 Recording and monitoring of customer and order processing data to generate sales
service and marketing reports to reflect upon the progress (Holm, 1998)
Defining:
In the step of defining requirements, the requirements obtained in the planning stage would
be documented and approved by the key stakeholders. The document which would
contained the finally defined requirements for the CRM development would be called a
Software Requirement Specification (SRS) which would record the requirements of the
project to be fulfilled at every stage of the software project life cycle. This would help the
ABC Company perform testing effectively once the software is developed.
The needs that would be identified in the planning stage would be utilized at the defining
stage to develop the scope and plan for the development project such that the outcome of
this stage can be presented in the form of scope documents; risk management plan, cost
benefit analysis and requirements document (G, et al., 2010). The requirements would
include functional needs of the system such as user interface, hardware requirements, data
and communication needs, and the non-functional needs such as system performance,
design constraints, user safety, and hardware constraints (Vehgal, 2000). These
requirements can be used for formulating a project WBS which lists down all the key project
tasks and it is presented below (McMurtrey, 2013):
1.0 Requirement Gathering
1.1 Stakeholder needs
1.2 Software User requirements
1.2.1 Admin
1.2.2 Sales and Marketing department
1.2.3 Customers
1.2.4 Management
1.3 Business requirements
1.3.1 Revenue generation
1.3.2 Cost savings
2.0 Infrastructure development

2.1 Hardware
2.1.1 Personal computers
2.1.2 Servers
2.1.3 Thin clients
2.1.4 Networking equipments
2.1.4.1 Cables
2.1.4.2 Routers
2.2 Software
2.2.1 CRM system licences
2.2.2 CRM security software license
3.0 Process Mapping
3.1 Sales data acquisition
3.2 Sales & marketing Process Map
3.3 Supporting Process map
4.0 Software development
4.1 Vendor selection
4.1.1 CRM Development vendors
4.1.2 System integrators
4.1.3 Security vendors
4.2 Software development
4.2.1 License for development
4.2.2 Customization
4.2.3 Interface development
4.2.4 Software modules
4.2.4.1 Sales
4.2.4.2 Order management
4.2.4.3 Customer database
4.2.4.4 Service contracts
4.2.4.5 Email Management
4.2.4.6 Marketing
5.0 Data Migration
5.1 Legacy Data Cleanup
5.1.1 Data formats
5.1.1.1 Excel Data

5.1.1.2 Access Data
5.1.1.3 SQL Data
5.1.1.4 CRM software Data
5.1.2 Unified data formats
5.1.3 Update formats
5.1.4 Data Migration
6.0 Testing
6.1 Interface Testing
6.2 Developer testing
6.3User Acceptance testing
7.0 Installation
7.1 Delivery
7.2 Installation
7.3 Integration
8.0 Training
8.1 Administrators
8.2 Employees
9.0 Project closure
9.1 Delivery acceptance
9.2 Project closure documentation
9.3 Project sign-off
Designing:
In this stage of software product designing, the architecture of the software solution would
be developed and would be documented in a Design Documentation Specification (DDS)
document with different design approaches. This document would get reviewed be the major
stakeholders of the company including customer service head, sales & marketing head,
project sponsor, and customer representatives on the parameters like modularity,
robustness, associated risks, budget impacts, and schedule impacts. Based on this
assessment, the most appropriate approach for the software design would be selected and
the architecture would be finalized (Chang, 2012).
As the project makes use of an iterative approach to development, even the design stage
can go through multiple iterations involving designing and re-designing to create best CRM

categories. This would be done on the basis of assessment or review of the prototype done
by the analysts.
The architecture finalized in the design involves illustration of the interconnections between
various software components that would help in development of CRM modules. The project
would make use of PHP programming language for coding over XAMPP server which would
use an Apache web service. The design stage would also involve designing of database
based on MySQL database.
Development and Implementation:
Based on the final design, actual software development process would start. Once a basic
version of the software is developed, testing would be done to identify if there are any bugs
in the software that are required to be identified. These bugs and errors would be resolved
and the resulting software version would be tested again to ensure that they are eliminated
and no new bugs are introduced into the system. ABC Company would have 2 potential
users of the application for each user profile including administrator, sales person, customer
service person, and customers who would be involved in the final testing of the software
(Vennapoos, 2008).
At this stage of implementation, the project would go through a series of iterations till final
software with good test results is developed. Use of SLDC phases would ensure that the
CRM software developed for the company takes care of all key stakeholder requirements
and it is of high standard.
This stage would involve customization of the base software based on the company
requirements. As the project uses RAD methodology, the time taken for the implementation
would be less as it makes use of rapid prototyping.
Testing
Software testing is done with a purpose of validation of the software requirements defined by
the stakeholders. The CRM software that would be developed would go through three types
of testing that include unit testing, system testing, and integration testing. Unit testing would
make use of a white box testing technique and would involve checking of the functionalities
of the software using a test data. Integration testing would use a bottom up approach such
that each module of the software would be tested using white box testing. System testing
would validate the non-functional requirements of CRM software by checking its
performance, usability, volume handling, and security strength. The tests would involve use
of different conditions and different usage levels.

Conclusions & Recommendations
The report was prepared to propose a project involving replacement of the manual CRM
system of the ABC Company by a digital CRM solution that would resolve the issues
currently faced by the company. The plan proposed the use of RAD methodology with
iterative SDLC approach to development. The software would be developed over APACHE
web server using PHP and the database would use MySQL query language. The key stages
of development were defined as planning, defining, development, implementation and
testing. The project is expected to bring several benefits to the organization including
improvement in productivity of the staff and increase in customer satisfaction. Based on the
study of the current system and of that best development practices available, certain
recommendations can be made for the software development project such that its success
can be ensured. These include:
 The project team must take the requirements from all the key stakeholders and
create a balance between them while documenting the final software requirements
 The iteration process must take into consideration both the designing and
implementation stage such that it can be ensured that there are no design faults or
bugs in the software
 Users may be selected and trained on the testing requirements such that the project
tam can ensure that they have sufficient knowledge about what is expected from
them and what would ensure proper testing of the software
 The testing should nay just involve the external but also the internal users as the
majority of the final users are going to be from the company including managers,
administrators, sales , marketing, and service professionals
 As the company has a very limited time for the development of the project, it is critical
that roles of each stakeholders are clearly defined in the project plan before it begins
to be executed such that any conflicts or confusions can be avoided at the later
stage.
 A risk management plan may be formulated collating information on all possible
project risks and identifying mitigation measures such these risk do not create any
major impact on the project deliverables
 It is important that the existing structure of the company and the processes is cleanly
understood and thus, the inputs from the internal staff during the requirement
gathering stage of the project is very critical for the organization

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