Section 8

What Is a Custom CRM

Team analyzing data charts and tools for custom CRM development

What is Custom CRM?

By now, you know that Customer Relationship Management is the heart of the modern business. It has emerged as a winning solution for companies to take their business into the knowledge era.

All of our discussion so far has proved that a good CRM software equips businesses with the information they need to maintain value-creating relationships with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders. No wonder the CRM industry is accelerating at a breakneck speed. The CRM industry is currently valued at $40 billion, and it’s worth is expected to reach a staggering $80 billion by 2025.

Source: SuperOffice

Now that they are becoming familiar with the benefits of technology, companies are investing more and more into IT solutions to increase the efficiency of their business operations, and CRM is a leader among these solutions. Smart CRM promises better customer relationships, increased employee productivity, higher lead conversion and sales, and ultimately a higher ROI, which makes it doubly attractive.

But what happens when companies invest in a CRM that doesn't yield the promised results? Although many people perceive it as a golden goose, a CRM that doesn't fit the company cannot help it scale, increase sales, and obtain a higher return on investments.

On average, 1/3rd Customer Relationship Management Projects Fail – CIO Magazine

The failure of CRM projects can be caused by a number of reasons, including over-budgeting, security/privacy issues, third-party integration issues, decreased user productivity, data import, end-user adoption, deficient functionality, technology limitation, inability to scale, and others. And why does this happen? Because most companies purchase pre-built, cookie-cutter, one-fit-for-all CRM software.

The solution? A Custom CRM.

A custom CRM is a platform built from scratch either by an in-house development team or contracted developers. The CRM is tailored according to the company's needs and requirements, and the final product is precise to the organization's specifications. Custom CRM can be particularly useful when your business model is complex and doesn't fit criteria set by out-of-the-box solutions.

Similarly, if you sell physical goods, subscription services, and more, it can be hard to find an out-of-the-box CRM solution that works with your business.

So, you need to build a Custom CRM system for your business to:

Integrate the CRM with other applications or systems.
Introduce unique features which can coordinate with your business process.
Make your system more advanced in the future.
Make your private information and confidential data more secure.
Successfully migrate data from an existing CRM to a new CRM.

Who Needs Custom CRM?

Every business is different in its own way - however, some are unique than others. It's the unique businesses and organizations that need a custom CRM. For example, schools and universities often find it hard to align their tasks with readymade CRM software. Therefore, 80% of the time, they opt for custom CRM built around the needs of their students, faculty, and even parents.

Similarly, custom CRM is the best option for you if you don't want to use readymade software with impractical features that are of no need. For example, some businesses don't require all the functions offered by an out-of-the-box CRM, as most only need a handful of features to run their business. In such cases, it is more practical and cost-effective to create a custom CRM built around a few features that you need.

When businesses come to us for a custom CRM, we start by asking what they want from the CRM. Once we understand the need of the business, we offer CRM features that will help the company achieve their objectives – whether it’s cost-cutting, operational efficiency, automation that diminishes lead time, simplified collaboration, or any other goal. We deliver solutions that add value to a business – DynamoLogic.

Think of it this way; it’s like purchasing a size 12 windbreaker when you really needed a size 14 raincoat. It will cover your body, but you will end up wet and cold. A custom CRM is like a raincoat that is tailor-made for you, and hence it fits perfectly and performs as expected.

It won’t be wrong to say that, businesses in any industry can benefit from a custom CRM. However, you will benefit the most if they have a unique business model and require the following:

Integration with Pre-programmed & Custom Apps
Unique Visual Representation of Data
Custom Analytics
Scaling
Affordability in the Long-run
Software Copyrights

Custom CRM Or Customization of Out-Of-The-Box CRM - What's Best?

You might be wondering, instead of building a custom CRM from scratch, why can't we customize a readymade CRM? Well, the answer is simple, most out-of-the-box CRM don't offer customization as they are not open-source software. Simply put, you cannot customize most of the readymade CRM according to your business needs.

Another major difference between the two is that custom CRM offers long-term savings as you don't have to pay recurrent monthly fees. Even if you do customize off-the-shelf CRM, you will have to pay extra on top of customization charges. Therefore, it's best to go for custom CRM rather than customization of out-of-the-box CRM.

Some of the major deciding factors when it comes to building a custom CRM from scratch or customizing an existing software depends upon the following criteria:

Functionality

When you decide to customize a readymade CRM, you get a lot of default features that you cannot remove - they can only be tailored to meet your business requirements. At the end of the day, you end up with unneeded features that have nothing to do with your business.

In contrast, custom CRM development from scratch focuses on functionality and features specific to your business. For example, you can incorporate features like real-listings, maps, and more if you run a real estate agency.

Cost

In general, customization of an existing CRM is less costly as compared to developing a custom CRM. However, in the long run, you will end up paying for a lot of useless features that have nothing to do with your business. Hence, it's a waste of resources.

If you create your own custom CRM, you will be paying a little more, but only for the features and functionality you need, and it also brings you more ROI. With custom CRM, you don't have to worry about recurrent licensing fees and updating costs.

Development Time

With customization of out-of-the-box CRM solutions, the only benefit is less development time, as you can quickly implement it compared to custom CRM. However, in such cases, the core functionality will be delivered after 2-4 months. In contrast, if you go for a custom CRM, the results will be delivered within 1-2 weeks of implementation.

Hence, you can interpret from the above that Custom CRM is the best CRM tool or platform built by your development team. It is required the most when the sales model of your company is more complicated. It is quite challenging to adopt the functionalities of existing or ready-to-use CRM tools for the particular requirements of your business. In this case, it is the best option that you should customize your CRM software.

You should opt for the Custom CRM as it fully complies with your business needs and customers' demands.

What Are Key Features of a Custom CRM?

Here are some of the key features of a custom CRM:

Contact Management

Custom CRM should include advanced contact management, allowing you to streamline your customer data, contact information, demographics, and transaction history in one place. It should also allow you to use filters to take out the required data based on location, age, past purchases, and more.

Lead Management

Custom CRM should assist your sales and marketing team in lead management at every stage of the lead funnel, right up to conversion. With efficient contact management, you will have all customer profiles and interactions at your fingertips.

Email Tracking

An important CRM feature that you should not miss is email tracking. This handy feature will offer you visibility of your email campaigns to monitor their effectiveness. In addition, you can integrate various email services with your CRM, including Gmail, Outlook, and MailChimp.

Social Media Management

This popular feature allows you to see how your audience interacts with your business on social media via likes, comments, shares, and more. It can be highly insightful for your marketing teams to help improve marketing strategies and overall customer experience.

Smart Dashboard

Custom CRM is all about functionality and ease. When it comes to custom CRM, a major benefit is creating a Smart Dashboard that provides you an overview of all the major analytics and areas. Make sure to increase your dashboard's overall accessibility and visibility, so you can access all basic functions and important data with a few clicks.

Benefits of CRM Mobile Applications

Nowadays, almost every company, whatever its industry or scale is, highly depends on customer relationships to remain at the top in this competitive environment. So, each company tries its level best to get the most out of its CRM as much as possible. According to research, CRM market software for both custom and non-custom is likely to reach $35 billion by 2023.

Every business has its own particular needs, and sometimes they need more than one CRM software to fulfil their necessities. But unfortunately, no universal or ready-to-use CRM tool could cover the requirements of all businesses. In this case, you don't need to be worried because you can opt for custom CRM as it provides you the following advantages:

User-Friendly And Tailored to Your Needs

Custom CRM software is an easy-going and less alarming process as compared to customizing readymade software. When using a readymade CRM, you have to pay for some new features you need for your sales model, and you also have to pay for some existing features that you don't need. But when you go for a customized CRM, your team can add any feature you want due to the flexibility of the custom CRM system. This way, you don't have to pay extra for features you don't need, which will significantly cut your development costs.

Flexible Integration and Workflow Automation

No matter what kind of business you are running, you get the benefit of flexible integration through a custom CRM. With Custom CRM, you can easily integrate the software with the operational and sales cycle of the company. This seamless integration can be done in any department at any level whenever needed.

It also helps in automating the workflow. Now you don't need to switch between different applications. Custom CRM allows task automation at various levels possible and feasible. These tasks may include customer support, marketing, sales, analytics, delivery notifications, billing task any many more. Of course, in this way you can also save your time and money as well.

More Affordable Operations

Implementing a CRM means you should be ready for a huge investment. With Custom CRM, you can implement the CRM only in those departments that need it instead of implementing it across the organization, reducing your cost. Moreover, custom CRM Makes it possible to connect with previous business processes, increasing efficiency and ROI.

If we look at the customization of readymade CRM, you will be paying a lot of money for features that you don't require. Similarly, in the long run, you will have to face recurrent licensing costs and software updates. But, in the case of custom CRM development, it's a one-time payment that translates into a lifetime of ROI.

Competitive Business Advantage

As you already know, every business is dependent on CRM in this era and tries its best to make the most out of its CRM software. So, if you use a readymade CRM, it makes no noticeable difference between you and your competitors. But if you use customer CRM for your business operations and sales cycles, then it's up to you which features you and your team develop into the software to get a competitive edge over others.

Customized CRM allows you to motivate your team members to generate new and exciting business policies. In this way, you can have strong customer relationships and higher productivity within the company.

Customer Insights and Better Analytics

A standard CRM can figure out the different problems you face and why you lose customers. These packaged CRM systems can also determine general customer data such as age, region, or the number of orders. But when it comes to the combination of different features, you must have a custom CRM.

You can have better and detailed analytics of the important steps or processes that a readymade CRM cannot provide. Custom CRM can also increase the productivity of the work as it allows necessary changes at any point.

Better Control

Readymade CRM providers usually offer you the monitoring function. So that whenever some technical issues arise in the system, they can monitor and solve them. But it takes more time.

Custom CRM software allows you to take full control over the situations in the company. Now you can have detailed information about what is happening inside the company. Your team can also seek out any technical error. You can also choose the format for the database you want.

Central Access to The Information

Custom CRM software helps in storing all the information in one place. In this way, all the employees of your company have easy and quick access to the data and information. They also get notified about the updates in real-time.

Standard CRMs have many advantages, but Custom CRM software can provide you the long-term benefits for your business. It allows aligning the strategies of your company according to the demands of customers. Hence provide you with a stronger and lifetime relationship with customers.

How Much Would It Cost to Get a Custom CRM?

Custom CRM offers flexibility in pricing as a wide range of software development houses offer custom CRM services. However, the cost of custom CRM varies depending upon the required features, scale, integrations, and accounts required. Typically, a custom CRM software ranges from $5,000 to $30,000 for the complete package.

However, with custom CRM, there is a one-time investment, and you get full ownership of the software. This way, even if you require custom add-ons, later on, you can customize your CRM software as you wish.

How to get a Custom CRM for Your Business?

CRM is a must for a successful business. We have readymade CRM solutions, but it is evident why custom software might be the best and most cost-effective solution for your business. If you want a custom CRM for your business, you can simply reach out to a vendor that offers CRM development services like Dynamologic to help you adapt a custom CRM solution for your organization.

If you are in doubt about the development process and cost, you can talk to a vendor and get a quote before moving forward. But we assure you, custom CRM is something you will never regret.