Define what the CRM is for
Identify the service contacts, referral relationships, enquiries and stakeholder follow-ups your team needs to manage. An illustrative operational example is assigning an owner for communication with a referring organisation. This is not a client case study, and it does not make the CRM a substitute for an EHR or a clinical referral decision.
Keep the purpose narrow enough for staff to understand what belongs in the tool and what must remain in an authorised clinical system. This page describes administrative relationships, not clinical referral assessment or a service for handling sensitive health information. Any such requirement needs separate scope and appropriate governance before it is considered.
Agree fields and ownership before configuration
Review the current contact and activity workflow with the people who use it. Agree the minimum fields needed, who maintains them and how work is handed over when someone is unavailable.
- Define contact types and the purpose of each field.
- Assign responsibility for follow-up activities and updates.
- Agree access roles, duplicate-record handling and review routines.
- Document exceptions that require staff judgement.
Test a complete workflow
Configuration should be tested against an agreed example from contact creation through to follow-up and handover. Use test or de-identified information wherever possible. Staff should check that the workflow reflects actual responsibilities before it is introduced.
Connections to other systems depend on technical feasibility, permissions and agreed scope. We do not assume a particular platform is supported or that an integration can be delivered.
Distinguish setup from ongoing administration
Setup establishes the agreed fields, workflow and handover documentation. Ongoing administration needs a separate routine for contact updates, requests and review. These activities are described under Managed Services and should have their own agreed responsibilities.
A CRM does not remove the need for appropriate information handling. Your organisation must approve access and data-handling requirements before information is entered, transferred or connected.
Agree what the team will receive
Proposed outputs include documented contact and activity workflows, agreed configuration within scope, and a testing and handover plan. The work is intended to clarify follow-up ownership, not guarantee referral growth or patient volumes.