How To Develop A Custom CRM For An Enterprise?

Marketing in 2023, strives to automate everything and everyone. The main reason is that companies are now tracking, analyzing, and tweaking all aspects of online customer interactions.

It becomes difficult to do it manually when you exceed the mark of the first 10-15 clients. Another reason for ubiquitous automation is the dominance of the service-loyalty tandem in the business world.

It doesn't matter if you run a local store or an international corporation, you can't survive without loyal customers.

The above reasons inevitably lead to using customer relationship management solutions in business—the famous CRM. Effective CRM-based business processes can help you build personalized relationships with your customers, offer them the right service, and thereby increase their loyalty. Speaking of, loyalty is very important especially when you consider that attracting new customers costs 4 to 10 times more than maintaining existing ones.

The CRM solution market today is full of ready-made solutions like Zoho CRM, AmoCRM, Pipeline, and others. So why do you need a custom CRM system? And if so, how to develop a custom CRM? Let's take a closer look.

Why Do You Need A Custom CRM In Principle?

According to Gartner, the CRM market will soon surpass $ 40 billion, making it the largest enterprise software market. At the same time, paradoxically, the share of CRM installations worldwide does not reach even two percent. Therefore, the question arises: How does such a huge market remain so undersaturated?

Many enterprise software giants such as Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle offer their CRM solutions, but they are very difficult to integrate, and they cost a lot of money.

However, they are also not always suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. So why not create a CRM tailored specifically for your company?

You get exactly what you need

Ready-made CRM solutions are designed to suit a wide range of users. They have a huge number of functions and options that you will never use. Such solutions are difficult to integrate, and learning how to use them is even more so. Plus, they are also expensive.
With a custom CRM solution, you get exactly what you need. If you later want to expand the functionality, you can still do it without rebuilding everything from scratch and learning quickly.

Better integration

By using your own CRM platform instead of a predefined package of functions, you can benefit from automating other business processes in your company. Document flow, sales, technical support, SMM, communication - all this can be controlled from a single interface.

Availability

Most CRM solutions work on a pay-per-user basis, which is not always effective for companies with more than one department. Sales professionals, for example, use CRM every day, while other employees use the program only occasionally. Accordingly, the price for rare use turns out to be too high.

With a custom CRM system, you only pay for the features you need and then invite as many users as you want. The system will grow with your business.

Required Functions For A Custom CRM System

The address book

The basic function from which many well-known CRM solutions originally grew. Ideally, your CRM address book should store information about all the people connected in one way or another with your business.

Traditionally, new contacts are added to CRM solutions manually. Today, however, there are various opportunities to automate this process.

Salesflare, for example, collects contact information from email signatures and social media profiles. You can also create a custom API to collect client information from forms, emails, and other tools for interacting with your content.

If you have already used another CRM system before switching to your own, we will transfer all the data you have accumulated to the new system.

As usually happens in business, potential customers who get into the marketing funnel are called leads. You follow the leads, gradually convince them to purchase your products or services, and finally close the deals. An effective custom CRM solution collects, calculates, and presents your data about any stage of this process.

The variety and number of multidisciplinary events can be challenging for both executives and frontline employees.

Therefore, effective CRMs offer tools for creating lists, scheduling calls, emails, and appointments.

Mobile version

Of course, the current popularity of mobile devices leads to the fact that many entrepreneurs want to get access to the management system anytime, anywhere, straight out of pocket.

Therefore, an optimized mobile version is a great investment when it comes to  CRM System development.

Sometimes the development of many great features by an entire team of programmers can be prohibitive in terms of cost for a company trying to get on its feet.

This is where all kinds of integrations come to the rescue. Services such as Trello, Yesware, MailChimp, and Google Apps are available for integration. They will make your system the “Swiss knife” for your day-to-day business management.

Recommended: STRATEGIC TRENDS IN ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

How To Develop A Custom CRM Solution

The priorities in the CRM development process are pretty clear. They include:

• Ease of use
• Affordable prices
• Functionality

At InvoZone, we focus on in-depth research and based on which we create a clear roadmap before starting development. This will allow you to develop the correct development plan and make sure that everyone is satisfied in the end.

Optimal Business Intelligence

As soon as a new custom CRM project looms on the horizon, we start working with a series of interviews with key employees of your company to get the most complete picture of what product you need. Common questions include:

• What customer information would you like to track?
• How would you describe/define your ideal CRM software?
• What are the goals for digital products in your company?
• Which departments and employees will be using the product?

We also study the industry in which you operate and your competitors. This will allow us to offer unique features for your CRM and help you stand out from the crowd with a real MVP.

Scope of work and requirements for custom CRM

At this point, we are already assigning you a personal Project Manager who will help you draw up a technical assignment and correctly translate your ideas into the form of tasks for developers.

Based on the goals of the project, we create a complete list of technical requirements, as well as outline the approximate stages and development processes.

Costs of custom CRM development

As a business owner, you need to get the most out of your investment. Therefore, we try to make sure that all your expenses are justified and that you will receive a sustainable return on your investment.

The cost of developing a CRM system directly depends on the established deadlines, functionality, and additional options, such as special design, integrations, etc.

Developing a full-fledged CRM from InvoZone can cost you anywhere from around $10,000 to $50,000. We agree this is not the amount of money that you just have around idle at any time.

Therefore, we usually start cooperation with the creation of an MVP (minimum viable product) at a low price and then move on and gradually increase the functionality. Thus, your investments are stretched over several months or even years, and you start earning from a new product as quickly as possible.

Trends In The Development Of CRM Applications In 2023

According to a recent report from Forrester, the following factors will be key in CRM development in the coming years:

• Mobility - a remote and mobile workforce is becoming more and more common. However, today's CRM solutions cannot yet fully meet the demand for lightweight, optimized solutions.
• Cloud technologies - standards of web storage and data exchange are constantly evolving, so every successful CRM simply must have fast and secure complex cloud functionality
• Social Media - content-oriented marketing is now trending all over the world, so the demand for SMM analytics and automation tools within CRM is absolutely justified.

If you are looking for a software development company to develop a flawless custom CRM solution, do not hesitate to contact us! You will receive a rough estimate of the project for free within 48 hours!