Building a CRM: A complete guide to the creation of your own custom CRM

Do you think that using a CRM for your business is the way to success? Well, we are sure that automation in all business areas is an important step that increases efficiency.

Of course, you can still use paperwork, check all the processes personally, and waste a ton of time trying to get all the information in one place. However, you will never get past your competitors this way.

We shall discuss the creation of a custom CRM, why it is required, and several other points that might be useful.

What is a CRM?

Have you ever heard of Bitrix, Salesforce, HubSpot? If your answer is “Of course, yes!”, then you have already experienced the power of CRMs.

CRM is defined as “customer relationship management”. This is a software that covers all the processes of a certain business in one place. It includes sales, marketing, department assignments, and many other things that are related to work.

In most cases, the software works with information from a huge variety of sources. This could include the contacts of your customers, website analytics, social media data, and many other details.

While a CRM is mostly used by marketers, analysts, and sales managers, it is also a popular tool among other workers. The software simplifies the management of the workflow and keeps everything in one place, meaning that there is no need to bother a colleague to get some data regarding a project.

We are confident that we have what it takes to help you get your platform from the idea throughout design and development phases, all the way to successful deployment in a production environment!

Custom CRM vs out-of-the-box CRM

Generally speaking, there are two types of CRMs that are offered on the market.

Custom

Your priority must be using a custom solution that is developed specifically for your business. It covers the required processes, adds features that your company requires, and implements integrations with your other software.

Although a custom CRM costs significantly more, using such a solution increases efficiency significantly more than any other software. You do not get any useless features, only those you need. Apart from that, the program is designed in a way that suits your employees best.

Out-of-the-box

An out-of-the-box solution is generally used by companies with shoestring budgets or a small workflow of business processes. Such software only has the most common features like setting assignments and getting analytics. It often cannot be customized, and it is hard to improve it.

While using this option is cheaper, you still spend money for prolonging the subscription and buying a license for the application.

Why do you need a CRM?

The usage of a CRM significantly increases the efficiency of all your business processes. In addition to that, it improves communication between departments and enhances client service.

Automated workflow

Most of your routine tasks could be easily automated with a CRM. You would only have to spend some time tuning it and teaching your employees to use the software. Automation could cover marketing, sales, billing, and many other stuff. However, it works best with custom applications.

All data is in one place

If each department uses the CRM, this means that you get access to all the information in one place. It is beneficial when you want to see how things are in your company or have to send some data to an employee.

Better analytics

Modern CRM software has a lot of filtering options that may help you find out at which stage your customers get stuck. You can analyze the behavior of specific people, for instance, clients from only one country or of one gender.

Building a CRM: A complete guide to the creation of your own custom CRM

How to build a CRM?

Now that we’ve arrived at the creation of custom CRM solutions, it is time we have covered several steps that should not be skipped.

1. Design

A bad design often lowers the efficiency of the software. It is crucial that your employees navigate within the software intuitively and understand where each feature is located. The fancy visual stuff is also a nice addition, but you must focus on UX first.

The best way to get a great UI and UX design is by hiring a specialist from the GlobalCloudTeam. Apart from design, the company will also cover other stages like full-stack development, deployment, and monitoring.

2. Determine the goals and features

What do you want to achieve by implementing a CRM?

Brainstorm this topic with your team to see what must be implemented in the application. Of course, you will be able to add other features in the future, but it is still recommended that you plan everything in advance.

3. Development

Now comes the longest part — development. Your team will spend quite a while turning your ideas into a real-life solution. It is important that you create a good project map, do not forget about setting reasonable deadlines, and add some milestones.

4. Testing

The best way to test the CRM is by making your employees use it for some time.

Although there are professional testers for this part, your colleagues are most likely to find some bugs and issues with the application. Also, they often tend to “break” the software in the weirdest ways that even testers don’t get.

5. Deployment

Finally, it is time to deploy the software solution and see how it works. During this stage, everything should already work as intended. Moreover, your application must have no bugs or issues.

6. Maintenance and updates

After deploying the software, you still need a developer team to fix bugs and implement future updates. New features will be needed from time to time, so make sure you always have someone to work with.

The bottom line

If you’ve decided to hire a development team to build your own CRM, then fill in the contact form to get in touch with a representative of the GlobalCloudTeam. The company will provide an expert team of specialists for any budget in no time!

Hurry up before your competitors jump ahead!