CRM software is a must-have for maximum firms as they allow them to keep, access, and manage the crucial sales data for an enthralling customer experience.
As marketers say, what should be automated, must be automated, and building custom Customer Relationship Management Software is essential to make this happen. This tool helps businesses flow in various aspects like
- Customer Satisfaction
- Customer Support
- Maximum Sales
- Brand Equity
- Brand Marketing
Did you know that it is a proven fact that automated CRM shall hit a 9-dollar profit for each dollar invested in its development? Earlier, most organizations that once bought CRM software couldn’t manage to operate it in their business processes.
Let’s understand in this article, what is CRM, whether it is feasible to develop a healthy relationship with a customer using custom CRM software, what features it should contain to meet the business goals, the easy steps to follow for developing CRM, and who to assign the task to.
Before we step to that, let’s understand what is CRM software all about:
What is CRM?
CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management which is a strategy or a tool to organize business processes and access customer data.
To define CRM software as a technology, it simplifies and manages all company’s relationships or communication with potential customers for an enthralling customer experience. Perfect CRM solutions help organizations to stay connected with customers, streamline processes and enhance profitability.
If you wish to know more about CRM, read more about the Comprehensive Guide and Historical Overview of CRM in detail.
We bet you – Many firms and business owners have thought about developing a custom CRM application at least once in a lifetime. If you’re one of them, it’s time to learn how to build your own CRM software in the easiest way possible.
To start with, let’s understand the reasons for CRM development and how exactly it can boost business growth in the long run (from a time and money perspective).
Reasons to develop CRM Software:
As per FinancesOnline research:
- Around 91% of entrepreneurs integrated CRM software over the last year.
- CRM can increase conversion rates by 300%.
- CRM can boost business sales by 29%.
- Around 65% of business owners elevated their sales quota.
- CRM boosts team productivity by 34%.
CRM software integration brings together comprehensive benefits to any service-based company from e-commerce to healthcare and logistics.
Rather than exhausting resources and force-fitting your business into some complicated CRM software, why not create a purpose-built and custom CRM development in the shortest time? Here are the four major reasons to develop your own custom CRM:
1. Growing In line with Growth –
Generally, you will find any software good at first. But only a few are versatile and adaptable enough to meet the expectations of fast-growing companies. Isn’t it?
Many CRM developers focus on covering a bigger audience with loads of features. However, it makes the interface less intuitive and troublesome for staff training. Instead, it must only contain features that are required in order to avoid extra expenses on customization and staff training.
Expenses on customization and staff training are the main elements to consider while going for the right CRM vendor. These are long-term investments for any business in this respect. CRM must only have those features that are required and designed to fit the workflow.
It’ll cost you a pretty penny to build and maintain the custom CRM if it’s done right. It acts as a booster to companies to be more effective and earn more thinking of it as a long-term investment as well.
2. Improve Workflows
Developing a CRM from scratch can be fruitful for any business especially when you incorporate it into various departments to simplify their workload.
CRM could automate marketing, analytics, orders, sales, customer support, delivery notification and cut down further investments. Certain kinds of automation are not always implemented when it comes to packaged solutions as they are designed to cover only the common needs of various businesses.
3. Get Scalable Solution
Undoubtedly, the CRM system is not homogeneous as it contains numerous individual applications and systems that are designed specifically to simplify the tasks of departments workers.
For example, waiters in a restaurant need software for taking orders. And marketing department of the same restaurant needs a tool to design and send vouchers, promo notifications, etc. It is complicated to develop all CRM apps simultaneously.
Step-by-Step Guide to Create Your Own CRM Software
It takes thoughtful preparation steps for CRM making due to the rich functionality that needs to be followed by the businesses. So let’s see in detail – how to build your own CRM Software:
Step 1 – Set up goals
Every process starts requires a plan of action and a goal. Before building a CRM, it’s essential to pen down the business goals and examine what challenges you are willing to solve. For example, you are wanting to raise the annual sales by 20% or reduce your clients’ acquisition cost. The set goals will lead the software development team to prepare the detailed project’s specifications and the CRM developer will choose the best suitable technology stack.
Step 2 – Choose the user role
The biggest benefit of the CRM platform is incorporating strong communication relationships between the organization’s employees. However, each employee uses the CRM software depending on their allotted department-related tasks, which is why you have to specify the user to make a CRM for. For example, the marketing and sales teams make use of data analytics tools, in turn, the customer support team needs communication tools with fewer efforts from the manager side.
Step 3 – Consider security requirements
CRM databases store a large amount of data & information, so it’s crucial to secure clients’ data from being misused or stolen by employees for unwanted purposes. It would be a nice idea to build complex security models in CRM software development, especially if these models are like an org chart. Surely, they need extra time and expenses, and they’ll be ineffective once you decide to reshape your org chart.
Step 4 – Selecting Contractors
Selecting the ideal contractor with the required expertise and outsourcing the CRM software development is the fastest way to build CRM software. Outsourcing is a great opportunity to fetch high-quality services at an affordable price. You need to carry some in-depth research — from the business’s portfolio to clients’ reviews on reputed B2B platforms like Clutch or IT Firms.
Step 5. Make a Rough Estimation
Your CRM developer will prepare a rough estimate at the time of first contact with them based on your initial feature list. Later the document determines the time period and costings required to be spent on the particular project. It’ll help in planning the budget and deciding whether to continue the collaboration or not. In addition to that, client-oriented IT vendors will hopefully make project rough estimations for free.
Step 6 – Development
At the ‘Development’ stage, the design, project framework, and flowchart must be submitted. Afterward, the CRM developer will change the mockups into a working product with agile software development practice. The agile approach is perfect for CRM development because it allows developers to step back to previous stages to resolve the issues and continue the process of development.
Step 7 – Launch
Once you’ve crossed all the previous development stages, it’s time to launch a ready-made solution for your users. At this stage, you launch the product and collect customers’ feedback or reviews to examine where they like using your product or if something needs to be altered.
Step 8 – Post-Project Support
No doubt, CRM software needs to be maintained constantly due to its complex nature by your CRM developer. One can support the software by studying feature behavior, augmenting functions or updates, and making amendments as per the users’ feedback.
Tips to Find a Tech Partner to Build Custom CRM:
As a reputed software development company with extensive expertise in CRM development, we’ve gathered four practical tips for finding a suitable development team to build CRM software without mistakes
- Pay close attention to Industry Expertise in order to get the desired product
- Check out the Portfolio of the company before aligning your vision for your own CRM software.
- Read the Clients Feedback or reviews to decide whether it is a good idea to deal with the company
- Analyze the Time Zone Differences to schedule meetings as you may encounter communication difficulties while outsourcing it.
The next question is “Where to find a reliable IT vendor to start your research on CRM Software? Mobcoder has the required expertise in building CRM for different industries: finance, e-commerce, healthcare, and so on.
Ready to build your custom CRM software? Our team of professionals can assist you with CRM development and estimate your project quickly. Get in touch today!