How to Choose a CRM?

How does this mysterious system work, why is it not a panacea for business, and how do you know if you need it or not? Today we will talk about CRM—its types, goals, and an old-school analog.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. The system helps automate processes to build a more effective dialogue with customers, collect a database, and remind customers about you at the right time.

How to Distinguish a Good CRM from a Bad One?

Good, bad, ugly—this isn't about CRM systems, although the Wild West flair is quite appropriate in the battle for leads. Let's break it down using the example of construction. In construction, there are eco-friendly materials, non-eco-friendly, expensive and budget-friendly, high-quality and low-quality. There are also territorial preferences—like in Croatia they love building with stone, while in Norway they use wood. When we talk about development, there are no good or bad materials, only those more suitable and those not fitting the task. The main criterion and question we should ask is: "Does this CRM system have the necessary features and meet our specifics? Can it fulfill our request?" There are no universal platforms, no matter how much we want to simplify everything. The system for sports clubs will differ from a CRM for construction companies. Different approaches and schemes will be used to attract leads.

If we talk about development from scratch, five criteria are often involved when choosing a CRM:

1. Number of developers in the market
2. Cost of these developers
3. Scalability
4. Code maintainability
5. Update frequency

A CRM has a specific technology, if you will, bricks from which the system is built. And there is a concept—what this CRM is needed for. What do we want to build from these bricks? A garage? A house? A playground? When a company says, "I want to implement a CRM," they often don't understand why. The owner saw a working system in a completely different field and hopes it will work the same for them. This problem is as old as the world. The absence of a CRM has never been a problem for anyone. You can take Excel with a database, attach a communication service to it, for example, Sendsay, and you will get the simplest CRM system. But the main request is not this. Any company wants not just a lead database but a 50% increase in revenue.

Imagine there is a hypothetical company "Papaya" selling furniture. It has a website through which sales are made, and there is a content management system. Marketers use Excel to enter all customer data. With this table, you can communicate more frequently with the consumer, warm up their interest in buying, and remind them of discounts and new offers. In this setup, a CRM system serves as a lead database, for which information is filled. A complex system is not necessary here.

Now imagine that the furniture company "Papaya" has grown significantly, opened branches in several regions, and launched a large production chain. Naturally, it’s time to think about a logistics system for furniture delivery. What does the process of ordering a purple stool look like in a successful furniture company? You order a specific product configuration, it is sent to the factory and produced for a while. The company saves your data: full name, specific stool configuration, how long you will wait, which city you are in, who is responsible for this process, when the delivery will be, and so on. CRM is the foundation of a large system that allows optimizing business processes. First, advertising is carried out at the cold sales stage. If a lead calls the company—they move from a cold base to a hot one. The lead's status changes, and we consider them a potential client to whom we can more frequently send all offers. When you have many products and a large turnover of potential clients, a CRM system will be the most convenient option, as long as you know how to draw the right conclusions.

Choosing a system that doesn't suit your needs will make CRM work against you. You may face overload and unnecessary features that only complicate the interaction process. The technical aspect is not as important as the concept and idea. You need to choose a CRM based on the company's business task since the system can serve different purposes. This is what we do at the "Digital Technology Bureau"—product development. We don't just take on the task of "creating a website," but a product that will sell and meet the client's goals. And always in the process of building business models, it is important to clearly see the outcome and predict the desired result, so you make fewer rash decisions.