Developing a Dynamics 365 Project Plan and Brief

If you’re about to embark on installing Dynamics in your organisation, our implementation plan will help you to define exactly what you need from your Dynamics install and make sure your company is ready.

Introduction

Many Dynamics implementations fail not because of poor work from a supplier, or poor training, but because of poor planning.

On average, 33% of CRM projects fail due to unrealistic expectations, poor planning, and lack of user involvement

 It’s important to plan your project carefully, because it’ll help with:

• Managing any risks which the project will have
• Reducing costs. If you’re clear about what you’ll need, your project will stay on track and keep to budget
• Getting the project finished sooner
• Better user adoption

The Steps to a Better Dynamics Project

Don’t try and get all the features you need in the first phase of the project.
Get the main functionality working first and then rollout new features and integrations at later stages

Define clear goals

What are the objectives of the business? Examples include increasing sales, improving customer satisfaction, or enhancing operational efficiency

Make sure these goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

There more about project goals on Microsoft’s site

Involve your stakeholders

Include stakeholders from every department in the planning process to gather a range of opinions and make sure the implementation works from their department

Hold regular meetings and workshops to discuss objectives and gather feedback

Conduct a needs assessment

You’ll need to perform a thorough assessment of your business processes, systems, and pain points. This will help you understand where improvements are needed.

You might discover pain points like:

• Poor lead management – lost leads and slow follow up
• Low quality data
• Duplication of data and tasks
• No single source of truth
• Manual actions
• Limited reporting
• User dissatisfaction

Conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)

Use surveys and interviews to gather this knowledge from employees and customers.

Map objectives to system capabilities

Research Dynamics 365 Sales and identify the features which that can help achieve these business goals. For example,

• Sales forecasting
• Lead management
• Customer service integration
• Workflow automation
• Marketing automation

Create a plan that maps specific system capabilities to each business objective.

Set success metrics and KPIs

What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that will be used to measure the impact of this implementation?

You’ll need to establish baseline values for these metrics and set targets to track progress.

Develop a communication plan

You’ll need to keep all your stakeholders informed about progress on the implementation

Remember to focus on how the implementation aligns with business goals and the benefits it will bring.

Identify current sales processes and pain points

• Interview stakeholders and gather knowledge about their current challenges and experience. Ask for suggestions
• Run workshops to discuss these points collaboratively
• Run a customer feedback survey
• Shadow the sales team to learn more
• Map your processes visually
• Analyse sales data to find areas for improvement. Areas such as
• Poor response times
• Low satisfaction score
• Poor conversion rates

You will now have a detailed brief to show a potential supplier

Check your IT infrastructure is ready for Dynamics

• Check the technical requirements for Dynamics
• Catalogue your hardware. Examine
• Ram
• Disk space
• Processor speed
• Is your OS and software compatible with Dynamics?
• Is your internet connection suitable?
• Check your speed and latency [link to speed article]

Assembling your implementation team

Your implementation team will need to cover these roles. Each team member could carry out one or more roles. This will make communication with your supplier much easier, as they know who to contact about each topic

• Project Sponsor – overall direction and support for the project.
• Project Manager – oversees the entire implementation process.
• Business Analyst – analyses business needs and translates them into requirements.
• Technical Lead – handles the technical parts of the implementation.
• Data Migration Specialist – manages data migration.
• Change Management Lead – Manages change management.
• Training Coordinator – oversees the training program for end-users.
• Quality Assurance (QA) Tester – ensures the system meets quality standards.

There’s more about project teams on Microsoft’s website

Making sure your implementation team works well

• Have regular meetings
• Choose a comms platform (Teams, Slack etc)
• Send regular updates
• Define each person’s role
• Choose a project management platform and use it!

Creating a project timeline

• Break down the project into phases.
• Kick-off Meeting
• Requirements Gathering
• Supplier Selection
• System Setup
• Data Migration
• Testing
• Go-Live
• Post-Implementation Review

You’re now ready to choose a supplier

Microsoft’s Documentation

Create a project plan for your Dynamics 365 implementations – Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

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Check Pete Murray’s original post https://www.allmysystems.co.uk/developing-a-dynamics-365-project-plan-and-brief/ on www.allmysystems.co.uk which was published 2025-03-26 13:40:00