Why Build a Custom CRM for Your Business

To improve your business flow, it is an excellent idea to automate everything that can be automated, and building a custom CRM is a great way to do it. Continue reading this article to learn:

• What is CRM?
• Benefits of the custom CRM over ready-made CRM
• Types of CRM software
• Custom CRM development: the key requirements and features
• The best technologies for creating a successful CRM offered by Leobit

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is used for regulating relationships and interactions between a company and its customers. CRM brings together information from all data sources within your organization and gives you a holistic view of each customer experience. It improves the quality of customer communication, enhances customer loyalty and satisfaction that is the key to a successful business. Also, with CRM systems, you can effectively manage your business due to various built-in analytical features and other integrations made depending on your needs.

Over the last four decades, CRM software has evolved from a basic database marketing solution to full-stack customer relationship management systems. Now it can be considered the largest and most fast-developing type of enterprise software. According to Grand View Research, both custom and non-custom CRM software market was valued at USD 40.2 billion in 2019 and is predicted to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 14.2% from 2020 to 2027.

Benefits of the Custom CRM over Ready-made CRM

A ready-made CRM system doesn’t always fully meet your business needs and can take away an opportunity to scale your business, enlarge it, or make changes. To avoid these drawbacks, it is recommended to develop your own digital tool to manage customer data and improve marketing. Some of the significant benefits of custom CRM over ready-made CRM are listed below.

Less Expensive 

A custom CRM system is a cost-effective option compared to ready-made enterprise CRM software that comes with annual or monthly subscriptions. It offers a lot of premium features that you may not need if you are not running a large business. Still, you need to pay for those features even if you don’t use them. Whereas, in a custom CRM system, you can choose the required features as per your feasibility and pay only for them. 

Less Onboard Time

Sometimes a ready-made CRM may not align with your company’s existing workflows. In such cases, you will need to hire a certified trainer and train your employees to get acquainted with the CRM. It can be time-consuming and costly. However, custom CRM software is already adjusted to your company’s business processes. It decreases onboard time as the employees can get used to the system easier.

Seamless Integration

Ready-made CRM may compel you to bear considerable expenses for CRM extensions. Still, you need to rely on the expert’s help to carry out the integration with necessary apps such as Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Accounting apps, etc. In contrast, a custom CRM system is a pocket-friendly and smart option in terms of the integration process.

Simplified Scaling Process

A custom CRM system offers you an opportunity to personalize your business as per your requirements and convenience. It helps you add more customers free of cost, and you can also personalize the lead management, database management, and many other vital functions.

Enhanced Automation

A custom CRM software is also the best option for enhancing the automation process of your work that saves significant time, minimizes errors, and boosts sales. Moreover, it is a cost-effective method, whereas this automation feature is missing in ready-made CRM.

Seamless Data Integration

Data management is an essential and challenging task for running your business smoothly. Customer relationship management software enables you to meet the requirements of data integrations effortlessly. With the help of enterprise CRM, you can migrate the data securely from the old system to the new one. Its compatible and user-friendly interface also prevents data loss.

Types of CRM systems

Although CRM systems are alike, they are divided into four types. Understanding better the specific purpose of each type of CRM will help you choose the right one for your business.

Operational CRM

The operational CRM system mainly deals with routine business tasks and helps with marketing, sales, and service automation. This makes it an ideal choice for your business management and enhancement of customer satisfaction.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM systems can efficiently manage and process customer data. It will help you maintain customer details, statistics, and analytics and use them effectively to improve your business planning and decisions.

Collaborative CRM

A collaborative CRM system helps you to exchange customer information among various departments in your organization, even if they work separately. The main goal of such CRM is improving your interaction with customers and putting the quality of service first. 

Strategic CRM

A strategic CRM system focuses on building everlasting customer relationships instead of just short-term business profits, sales, and campaigns. With the help of strategic CRM, you can easily adjust and personalize customer interaction strategies.  

Custom CRM development: the key requirements and features

CRM systems can differ not only by type but also by structure and functionality. Below you can find some of the essential CRM requirements and features that will help you to understand custom CRM development.

Contact Management

Contact management is the main feature of any CRM software that helps you maintain the customers’ contacts and personalize them as per your requirements. You can organize the contacts appropriately and use them in your marketing strategies. Besides, it can also improve your customer relationship management.

Performance Management

Performance management is another important feature of CRM systems. It helps to evaluate and manage the sales performance as well as improve the performance of sales teams by addressing the problem areas based on the available data.

Communication Management

Managing communication with customers is essential if you are focused on achieving customer satisfaction. CRM software makes it easier by tracking your interactions with customers, including their payments, purchases, reviews regarding your company, etc. Moreover, it provides you with an excellent opportunity to plan and improve your marketing strategies. You can integrate all the interactions between customers and your company into your CRM, easily create email campaigns (check this article for the email design inspiration), run live chat and support directly from your CRM, collect and analyze the customers’ data.

Opportunity Management

CRM system enables you to manage sales opportunities for boosting your marketing and sales activities. With the help of CRM software, you can ensure the flawless collaboration of marketing and sales teams. You can also focus on the lead management of the most qualified sales representatives.

Order Management

CRM system helps you create your product catalog and manage orders, sales, invoices, and much more. It enables you to track the orders placed and customize the shipping and delivery timings. You can also manage your bills and ensure timely payment as CRM software keeps you notified by highlighting the overdue bills. Furthermore, you can also provide discounts and credits on purchases to keep your customers happy and satisfied.

Document Management

CRM systems will save a lot of time by protecting and managing business documents efficiently. You can access the required data anytime from your device. This feature helps to manage, control, and share the essential documents effortlessly.

Marketing Information Management

When you deal with thousands of customers and contacts, it is challenging to text them manually. However you can create a series of messages as per the customer needs and the CRM system will plan, send, and track your marketing campaigns automatically.

Forecasting Ability

Apart from automating your business processes, CRM software also provides sales forecasting. It gives detailed information about customer satisfaction and monitors new customer’s purchases to get potential customers references in the future.

Leobit offers the latest technologies for creating a successful CRM

Leobit’s software engineers follow the latest Microsoft development practices and proven methodologies to build custom CRM software for multiple industries: finance, e-commerce, healthcare, real estate, and so on. We possess solid expertise in the Microsoft .NET Core framework. It is a universal solution for CRM systems of any complexity. Web API built with .NET Core can easily be integrated with client-side frameworks like Angular, React, Vue, etc. Also, thanks to its multi-platform functionality, .NET Core can guarantee your CRM hosting availability on different operating systems and environments.

Cloud-based system Azure is another Microsoft tool that is great for hosting all your CRM information remotely. It enables deployment of your CRM data anywhere in the world and provides opportunities for quick and seamless updates deployment across every system in your organization. Moreover, Microsoft Azure takes rigorous security measures to protect data such as data encryption, automated backups, comprehensive information security and privacy policies, etc.

Thus leveraging Microsoft technologies to their fullest potential, Leobit experts deliver reliable and modern CRM software with a highly secure environment for customer data. One of the most prominent examples of custom CRM systems developed by Leobit is a web CRM for small and medium-sized enterprises. Our team created immense value for customer’s business helping them to save $350,000 within the first 6 months after the software implementation. If you want to build a CRM software, feel free to contact us for advice on the CRM development process.