CRM Implementation
Current CRM, sales process, teams, data migration, integrations, and reporting.
Reach for it when: A CRM implementation or a migration off a system the client has outgrown.
- sections
- 9
- questions
- 29
- required
- 5
- AI assisted
- 29
Every section, every question
This is the template as it ships. Edit the wording, reorder the sections, or delete what does not apply to your studio.
About Your Business
- Business name*Short text
- IndustryShort text
- Company sizeSingle choice
- Geographic marketSingle choice
- Primary products or servicesShort text
Current CRM Situation
- Do you currently use a CRM?*Single choice
- Why are you looking for a CRM implementation?Multi choice
- Describe your current customer management process*Long text
Sales Process
- How do leads enter your business?Multi choice
- What stages does a lead go through before becoming a customer?Long text
- How many new leads do you receive per month?Single choice
- Do you have a defined sales pipeline?Single choice
Teams & Users
- Which teams will use the CRM?Multi choice
- How many users need CRM access?Single choice
- Do different teams require different permissions?Single choice
Data Migration
- Where is your customer data currently stored?Multi choice
- Approximately how many customer records need to be migrated?Single choice
- Are there duplicate or inconsistent records?Single choice
Integrations & Automation
- Which systems should connect to the CRM?Multi choice
- Which automation capabilities are important?Multi choice
- Additional integration requirementsLong text
Reporting & Analytics
- What reports are most important?Multi choice
- What KPIs do you want to track?Long text
Future Growth
- What is your biggest CRM challenge today?*Long text
- Where do you expect your business to be in 2-3 years?Long text
- What does success look like?*Long text
Budget & Timeline
- Desired timelineSingle choice
- Budget rangeSingle choice
- Additional notesLong text
* marks a required question. Every question in this template has AI suggestions available while the client is writing.
How to write a CRM implementation brief
CRM projects rarely fail on features. They fail on data nobody looked at until migration week, and on a sales process that turned out to be three sales processes.
This is the CRM implementation brief in Coligna — nine sections, twenty-nine questions — weighted toward the two things that actually move the timeline.
The nine sections, and what each one is for
About Your Business. Industry, size, market, services. Scale sets the shape of everything below.
Current CRM Situation. What they use now (or that they don't), why they're looking, and how customers are managed today. "Why now" is the answer that tells you whether this is a tooling problem or an organisational one.
Sales Process. How leads arrive, the pipeline stages, lead volume, and whether a pipeline is actually defined. That last field is doing quiet work — a client without a defined pipeline is buying process design, not software configuration.
Teams & Users. Which teams use it, how many people, and how permissions differ between them.
Data Migration. Where customer data lives now, how many records, and what state the data is in. The single most under-answered section in this brief — see the next heading.
Integrations & Automation. Systems to connect, automation wanted, and detail. Everything named is scope.
Reporting & Analytics. Which reports matter and which KPIs get tracked. Ask early: reporting requirements often reveal data requirements nobody mentioned.
Future Growth. The biggest challenge today, the two-to-three-year outlook, and the definition of success. Configuration choices that fit today and break at triple the volume are the expensive kind.
Budget & Timeline. Range, horizon, and notes.
Two questions clients answer badly — and two the brief doesn't ask
"What state is your data in?" — and expect optimism. Clients say "fine." The data has duplicates, three spellings of the same account, and a free-text field where a date should be. Data quality is where CRM timelines go, and it's the cheapest thing to discover at brief stage and the most expensive to discover in migration week.
"What are your pipeline stages?" — and check whether everyone agrees. Ask two people from the same company and you often get two answers. A CRM build assumes one pipeline; discovering mid-project that sales and account management run different ones is a rebuild.
Two more worth asking in the kickoff call, even though the template doesn't ask them:
"What happens to the old system?" Parallel running has a cost, and someone has to decide when it stops.
"Who's going to own this internally after launch?" A CRM without an internal owner decays into an expensive contact list within a year.
From brief to project
A submitted brief arrives in your inbound queue, sectioned and typed. It becomes an estimate, and the accepted proposal becomes a live project carrying the client's own answers about their data and their process. See how the full lifecycle works →
A PDF gets filled in once and filed. A brief-capture link needs no account and starts the work at submission.
Frequently asked questions
What should a CRM implementation brief include?
The current situation and why they're changing, the sales process and pipeline, who uses it and how permissions differ, the state and volume of existing data, what it must integrate with, and what reporting matters.
Why does the brief ask so much about data?
Because data migration is where CRM timelines are won or lost. Volume is easy to plan for; quality isn't, and it's invisible until someone looks.
What if the client doesn't have a defined sales process?
Then the project includes designing one, and the brief will show that. It's better to price process work openly than to discover mid-build that you're doing it for free.
What happens after the client submits it?
It arrives as structured answers, ready to review, estimate and convert into a project without re-typing anything. See pricing for what each plan includes.