You may have the best possible CRM solution on the market, a deep vertical award-winning software geared to meet your every need. What you will always struggle with is poor user 

Here's an interesting piece of information that got lost in the hype surrounding Salesforce's biggest deal ever. Apparently, the acquisition of MuleSoft in March for $6.5 billion was met with skepticism by senior management, until they were gently informed by a financial services firm of the importance of connecting data that is stored in disparate systems.

In my last blog [Invested Users: Best Practices of Maximizing User Adoption, Part 2], I discussed NexJ's second set of three best practices for user adoption, and why planning, partnering, and encouraging leadership are crucial steps in the process of engaging your users with your CRM.

In my last blog, I discussed NexJ's first three best practices of user adoption, and why developing, analyzing, and aligning are crucial steps in the process of engaging your users with your CRM. Today, I'd like to discuss the next three of the 9 best practices for user adoption, which are planning, partnering, and encouraging.

In a previous blog, I discussed how to measure your user adoption rates, and the effectiveness of comparing quantitative and qualitative results. Because users can log into your CRM system, without actually using it, it's possible to have extremely high quantitative results without having high user adoption.

High user adoption rates reflect that your company's software investments are being appropriately leveraged, and ideally show that users are engaging with the system. To determine the effectiveness of the software at your company, you need to know your user adoption rates.

For a person to use something, they almost always have to believe they have something to gain. For a CRM system, that means that a person should get more information out than they put in. After all, if all you have access to is the information you entered, what’s the point?

So when a system stops receiving support or development, it affects the health of the entire company. It can become expensive to maintain, difficult to upgrade, or so obsolete it risks pulling the company behind the competition. When people can't or aren't using the system, or when the system isn't able to provide the functionality that's needed, the organization must replace it.