Getting ready for CRM: how ACEM prepared for a Dynamics 365 implementation

Getting ready for CRM

As part of developing a new five-year strategy, ACEM’s leadership team recognises that staying valuable to existing members, while becoming more relevant and accessible to new ones, requires more than incremental change. The organisation cannot get where it needs to go without a significant review and overhaul of its technology environment.

A CRM platform has always been likely to play a role in ACEM’s future. What became clear early on, however, was that defining the problem was not straightforward. As the organisation explored its current environment, layers of complexity emerged, along with a growing awareness of the gap between the breadth of CRM platform capabilities and the demands of ACEM’s operating reality.

Instead of rushing to resolution, ACEM leaned into that uncertainty. Acknowledging what it didn’t yet know, it chose to deepen its understanding before moving forward.

This is not a story about a CRM implementation. It is a story about the work ACEM’s leadership team has undertaken, and continues to undertake, to understand its starting point, reduce risk, prepare the organisation, and create clarity before committing member funds to significant change.

Insights in this story come from executive, technology, and change leaders across ACEM. Together, they offer a practical look at what “getting ready for CRM” really involves.

Knowing your real starting point (you don't know what you don't know)

Before ACEM was ready to make informed decisions about any specific CRM, it needed a clear and honest understanding of its starting point.

Years of plugins, integrations, and workarounds have created a technology environment that is fragile but functional. In some areas, multiple applications perform similar roles. In others, manual processes fill the gaps between systems that were never designed to work together. Much of this complexity sits beneath the surface, invisible unless you know exactly where to look.

The ACEM team knows it operates in a complex environment, and that introducing a new system without understanding how work is really done risks simply recreating old problems in new tools.

As the project team explains, ACEM cannot rely on an off-the-shelf solution that handles “80 per cent” of scenarios and leave the rest to manual intervention. Many of the College’s programs involve hundreds of participants, complex progression rules, and strict governance requirements. These exceptions are not edge cases. They are part of normal operations.

While Microsoft Dynamics emerged as a strong potential option, ACEM deliberately avoided committing too early. Instead, the focus has shifted to understanding how the existing environment really works. Through early proof-of-concept work and a deeper architectural review, the organisation has examined why systems exist, where capabilities overlap, and how decisions in one area affect others.

Led by an Enterprise Architect from Fusion5, this work has surfaced valuable insights. It has highlighted multiple applications performing similar functions, fragmented identity and data management, and limited shared principles guiding technology decisions. Teams have historically solved local problems well, but without a unifying framework, complexity has steadily increased.

The project team describe the value of this phase as having someone step back and ‘pick apart’ the environment, questioning whether the organisation is working to best practice and establishing clearer principles to guide decisions going forward.

By taking the time to understand its real starting position, ACEM avoids a common pitfall: assuming the problem is simply the absence of a CRM. What has emerged instead is clarity around what needs to change, what can be simplified, and what must be preserved.

Why ACEM chose confidence over speed

As ACEM has deepened its understanding of its starting point, it becomes clear there is a lot to think through. The diligence work has surfaced new and important decisions. Each layer of insight reveals dependencies and trade-offs that need to be weighed carefully.

As the work progresses, the business case continues to evolve and sharpen. Decisions about systems begin to influence longer-term strategic thinking, including what ACEM can offer its members, how services might be delivered in the future, and what the organisation can realistically support and sustain.

That influence runs both ways. The five-year strategy shapes technology priorities, while the realities of the technology environment feed back into business planning. Allowing time for this interplay ensures CRM decisions are grounded in where ACEM is heading, not just where it has been.

Reflecting on the process, the project team note ACEM’s procurement process has taken a little longer because the leadership team did not feel ready to “jump.” Rushing ahead without clarity and certainty would risk locking the organisation into decisions that are difficult and costly to unwind.

Financial discipline also plays a role. As a not-for-profit organisation, ACEM’s investments are funded by its members. The team is acutely aware of CRM programs that have run over budget, failed to deliver expected value, or quickly become constraining rather than enabling. That is not a risk ACEM is prepared to take.

Just as importantly, this pace has helped bring people along on the journey. By taking the time to explore options openly and build shared understanding, ACEM ensures that when implementation begins, teams know exactly how and why key decisions have been made.

What started as an intention to “introduce a CRM” has evolved into something more considered: a clearer scope, a stronger starting position, and greater confidence in the path ahead.

The result is not hesitation, but confidence. Confidence in the next phase, in the financial planning that supports it, and in the organisation’s readiness to move forward deliberately and well.

Change readiness, not just system readiness

For ACEM, the introduction of a CRM is only one stream of change underway across the organisation. It is an important one, but it sits alongside broader shifts in how the College operates, collaborates, and supports its members.

A common challenge linked to a CRM implementation is that the future state is not fully known upfront. As the project team note, until a system is implemented and embedded, it is difficult to predict exactly how processes and ways of working will change.

Staff are acutely aware of the limitations of existing systems and practices. There is a strong, shared understanding that things need to change. Unlike many transformation programs, the challenge at ACEM is not convincing people that change is necessary but helping them understand how change will shape their day-to-day work.

Some of the change activity underway therefore focuses less on technology and more on operating model and behaviour. Historically, membership teams support different communities in largely siloed ways. Preparing for CRM means beginning to bring those teams together and recognising interdependence across functions.

The real change lies in shifting workflows and work habits to acknowledge how connected the organisation’s work really is, moving from independence to interdependence. That shift, while subtle, represents a significant change for teams who have long worked diligently within well-defined boundaries.

The team use a simple analogy to explain this shift. Public transport works well as a system, but only if people are willing to change their behaviour, walking the final distance rather than expecting the train to stop at their front door. In the same way, CRM will not succeed if the organisation expects technology to adapt to inefficient or inconsistent practices. The system only delivers value when behaviours change alongside it.

This thinking has sharpened ACEM’s focus on an important point: technology is not always the problem. Over time, inefficient processes have been embedded into bespoke systems, and simply moving those same processes into a new platform will not solve anything. Some processes will need to change, and others will only be fully understood once the organisation begins working in a new way.

ACEM is conscious that this transition carries risk, particularly given its lean, highly capable teams and the deep domain knowledge they hold. Supporting people through that change, by providing the right training, time, and capability to adapt, is a focus as the organisation moves forward.

Change readiness for ACEM is not about trying to resolve every question or adjustment upfront. It is about creating the conditions for change to succeed: shared understanding, openness to learning, and a willingness to adjust behaviours as well as systems.

That mindset underpins how ACEM is approaching its CRM journey, not as a technology rollout, but as a broader evolution in how the organisation works.

Preparing for a successful Dynamics 365 CRM implementation

Preparing for a successful Dynamics 365 CRM implementation often starts well before a platform is selected or deployed. Many organisations begin by reviewing their existing systems, integrations and data environment to understand where complexity exists and how information flows across the organisation. This type of CRM implementation preparation helps identify duplicated functionality, fragmented data and manual workarounds that could limit the value of a new CRM platform.

At Fusion5 we help organisations develop a clear Dynamics 365 CRM strategy by assessing CRM readiness, reviewing technology architecture and planning integrations. This preparation enables organisations to approach a Dynamics 365 CRM implementation with greater clarity, reduced risk and stronger alignment between systems, processes and people.