A Step-by-Step Guide of Custom CRM Software Development

calender May 23, 2023
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Sunil Kumar

Principle Solution Architect

Custom CRM usually comes into play to meet the common goal of any business to have new customers and retain existing ones.

Every old and new business needs a better way to manage them well in the digital age.

And this is where customer relationship management (CRM) can help you.

The demand for custom CRM software development is increasing like never before.

Old businesses must adapt to the digital space and gain a foothold in the digital era by streamlining customer relationship management processes. Now is the time to organize with custom CRM software and serve customers better.

Examples of CRM systems include HubSpot CRM, Salesforce, and Zoho.

Here are some CRM stats you must know:

  1. As per FinancesOnline research, CRM can increase conversion rates by 300% and boost sales by 29% in industries such as technology, business services, retail, banking, security, and media.
    Over 91% of businesses have integrated CRM software over the last few years.
  2. As per research by Grandviewresearch, the value of the global CRM market may reach USD 57.9 billion in 2022.
  3. As per NucleusResearch, an automated CRM can give you back a 9$ profit for each 1$ dollar invested.

You should know what CRM is and how it helps your business before you learn how to build your custom CRM software.

What is a CRM System and How It Helps Your Business

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the process of managing your relationships with existing and prospective customers during a sales process. And CRM software is a tool that helps you aggregate, organize, and analyze customer data in one place.

CRM software benefits large-scale businesses and small businesses/startups with a large customer base.

It is time to automate your business by opting for a custom CRM if you want to expand your business.

You can opt for a market-ready CRM system or create your own custom CRM from scratch for better results.

If your business needs an out-of-the-box CRM, or if you want some features customized, then a custom CRM solution by a CRM software development company is the way to go.

How Customized CRM Benefits Your Business

1. Your business gets a new identity

Your business gets a new identity with a custom CRM solution. Customers or clients can easily connect with your brand name in CRM software. You can have a software development company build your own CRM and design it according to your preferences.

2. Feature-loaded CRM software

CRM software can add more appeal to your business. Your customized CRM software can improve workflow with essential extra features. The team can interact with customers in a better way and help gain leads as well.

3. Better business productivity

Customized CRM software can help you to scale your business to new heights. You can build various CRM applications and modify them as per need with a single database. And you have complete control over the database.

A custom CRM saves you time wasted on performing repetitive tasks. It has a long-term positive impact on your business and increases productivity.

4. Less expensive than a ready-made CRM

Ready-made CRM systems like Zoho and Salesforce come as SaaS products on a subscription basis. And the amount charged is based on the number of users and the features. Such plans can become inadequate or expensive to maintain once your business grows.

You can save money and time by automating the functionalities you need for your business with a custom CRM.

Types of CRM Software

You can choose any CRM software from the ones below to help you achieve your business goals.

Types of CRM Software

1. Analytical CRM

The primary use of analytical CRM is to gain insight into customer data and their behavior. You can check real-time analytics to gain better statistical insights into your business. And make informed decisions according to that data.

You can also learn how well your business is doing and make collaborative decisions to improve workflow and revenue generation.

2. Operational CRM

Operational CRM mainly focuses on the business operations of your company. You can easily automate and streamline the sales process with the help of this CRM software.

Some features include contact management, lead management, marketing workflow, sales pipeline, and help desk management. You can track the sales funnel and see how leads get converted to know what you can do in the future.

You can also use operational CRM to manage customer service.

3. Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM can be your go-to CRM if you want to bring more efficiency to the communication system between various subdivisions in the company like sales, marketing, and tech support.

Businesses prefer collaborative CRM for shared systems and better integration between teams.

Team members across various subdivisions can quickly check out their activities and share data through this platform.

4. Strategic CRM

Strategic CRM is a practical option if you want to focus on building long-term customer relationships and following a client-oriented business culture.

You can get the information of the clients who pass through the sales funnel and customize the workflow as per the information received. It can help you improve interaction with the customer and turn them into leads.

You can choose any CRM software from these types depending on the requirement.

You can also build your CRM with customized integration of every single platform if you need all of them.

Key Features to Include in a Custom CRM

Important Features to include in a Custom CRM

You must know the features essential in your CRM software irrespective of the type of CRM you choose.

  • Marketing Automation
  • Lead Pipeline Management
  • Sales Team Collaboration
  • Customer Support

1. Marketing Automation

This functionality helps automate your email campaigns based on user behavior on your website. (For example, how long they stay on a particular page or what links they click)

2. Lead Pipeline Management

Every custom CRM needs a system to track leads.

Manual process or automatic syncing from your email service or website also requires such a system.

A collaborative space is essential to help salespeople and marketers target and prioritize a particular lead.

3. Sales Team Collaboration

A custom CRM design must ensure that sales managers and representatives are in the loop.

It should be easy for them to see their quota, new leads, and live opportunities on your website.

And it will prove helpful if the CRM can automatically track email activity to get everyone access to the history of interaction with each lead.

It is useful when you invoice clients later on as part of accounting.

4. Customer Support

Your CRM solution can help improve customer support by keeping track of all interactions with past and current customers. You can follow up with prospects that are not yet customers.

All emails, notes, and phone calls can be made in the system directly and logged into a central database. It helps people search them based on the content they are looking for or try them out manually.

How to develop a Custom CRM Software from Scratch

Building your custom CRM solution can be a complex and challenging task. Have a clear idea of what solution you need, what sets you apart from others, your objective, and specific business needs.

1. Determine business goals for a custom CRM software

You need to identify what exactly you are building the CRM system for and how it will help your business grow.

Why do you need CRM software? Is it for automating tasks or reducing costs? Do you need insights to identify and understand your customers to increase sales?

Each CRM software has different functionality for each department. You need not spend much on developing sophisticated features if your focus is to reduce operational costs. One advantage of a custom CRM is that you have the liberty to build those parts you need based on your goals.

Here are some common goals that you can aim to achieve with custom CRM software:

  • Manage leads and know their source.
  • Get insights about customer behavior.
  • Assess marketing campaign results and optimize ROI.
  • Generate reports optimizing performance in any department.
  • Maximize customer retention and satisfaction.
  • Organize all data in one place.
  • Improve internal communication through notifications, automated texts, and emails.
  • Manage customer base and get valuable data about their journey.

2. Choose the type of CRM based on your goal

You need to choose the type of CRM that helps you achieve your goals. Various CRM software is categorized based on their different functionalities in many departments.

When to opt for a custom Operational CRM

You can opt for this type of CRM if your goal is to automate and integrate sales, marketing, and customer support. You can keep a close watch on routine operations with the help of dashboards and custom reports. And also monitor how they contribute to generating leads.

It is a commonly used CRM for retail, real estate, healthcare, and finance businesses.

When to opt for a custom Analytical CRM

Custom analytical CRM is helpful if your goal is to maximize customer acquisition. You can build a custom analytical CRM with any report and filters you need based on customer data.

Analyzing the reports make it easy to understand the location and product/service preferences. Analytical CRM helps target the right audience at the right time and place.

When to opt for custom Strategic CRM

Custom strategic CRM is a suitable option when your goal is customer retention. And you wish to understand at which point customers are leaving the sales funnel.

It gives information about the customer journey in your business operations and helps you make workflow changes across various departments. The changes made can help you improve customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.

When to opt for custom Collaborative CRM

Custom collaborative CRM helps enable seamless data synchronization across various departments in your business.

It makes all the data available to every team. Any team can view the data of another.

It makes the data flow seamless and helps analyze the data. And it helps strategize accordingly for better business output.

3. Determine the features to include in your custom CRM software

Core and Advanced Features of CRM Software System

You can figure out what technicalities you need to build your CRM system when you have clarity of your business goals and the type of CRM you need.

You must know the features you need to include and the ones to exclude.

You may have to deal with increased CRM software costs if you opt for the wrong features.

Core features of a CRM Software system:

  1. Contact Management
  2. Lead management
  3. Task management
  4. Calendar and reminders
  5. Dashboards and reports
  6. File sharing

Advanced features of a CRM Software system:

  1. Mobile Access
  2. Pipeline view
  3. Invoicing
  4. Third-party integrations
  5. Chatbots

Core Features of a CRM Software System

1. Contact management

You can store customer data, maintain records, and manage contact details like phone numbers and email addresses.

2. Lead management

Track potential clients and organize all leads in one place.

3. Task management

Keep all numerous sub-tasks under various departments in one place by systematically planning task management functionality. Enable team leads to create tasks, add relevant members, and leave comments where necessary.

4. Calendar and reminders

You can use this feature to track and manage various functionalities.

It will prove helpful for task management, lead management, and scheduling events/meetings.

5. Dashboards and reports

Dashboards can provide you with an overview of the work in progress in each department. The reports are necessary to gauge the efforts of a team. And to keep track of how well each department performs in various parameters.

6. File sharing

A quick file-sharing feature can be made in your custom CRM saving you loads of time. Manually uploading and downloading the same file can be avoided by this feature.

Advanced Features of a CRM Software System

1. Mobile Access

Everything has and will become mobile-first in the coming years. And this feature can make your CRM system more accessible to all stakeholders. It is a must-have feature as remote work becomes more mainstream every day.

2. Pipeline view

A pipeline view is a must when you build a custom CRM to ensure increased sales and revenue.

It shows a prospect’s journey from a lead to becoming a customer through a visual representation.

3. Invoicing

An advanced automatic invoice feature can make it easy to do tasks like check inventory status, generate invoices, and track invoice history.

4. Third-party integrations

You can build an ecosystem and integrate it with third-party tools with a custom CRM.

5. Chatbots

Chatbots are increasingly becoming common in CRM software. Your chances of customer acquisition and retention will improve significantly the quicker you respond to customers. Auto-responses by a chatbot feel more human and provide an engaging customer experience.

4. Determine access levels for each functionality

Make sure to define which feature you will have and who has access to which feature when you decide to build a custom CRM Software.

You need to set up access permissions to control and secure all data.

5. Create a budget for building your CRM system from scratch

It is necessary that you know how much it is going to cost to build custom CRM software. You need to analyze the functionalities and development process for that.

The following are the different phases of developing a custom CRM you need to consider to determine the budget:

  • Requirement analysis and gathering
  • Design & wireframe
  • Custom CRM development
  • Dynamic prototype testing
  • Delivery and Launch
  • Monitor, Maintain, and Support

How Long Does It Take to Build a CRM?

Each stage in the process may take different amounts of time to complete. Custom CRM software development can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 1-2 months with a working time of 6-8 hours a day for five days a week.

It is the average duration of development for a CRM. But it depends on how much data, type of CRM, number of modules you need, and how advanced you want your CRM automation to be in the finished mobile app.

Technology Stack to Build a Custom CRM

You need the right tech stack that is reliable, safe, and performative to build the right CRM system. We recommend using the following technologies for CRM software development.

Front end languages:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

Front End Frameworks and Libraries:

  • AngularJS
  • Vue.js
  • React.js

Back end Languages:

  • Python
  • Java
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js

Back End Frameworks:

  • Laravel
  • .NET
  • Nest/ExpressJS
  • Symfony
  • Django

Cloud:

  • AWS
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud Provider
  • Heroku

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a CRM System?

The overall cost to build a customized CRM solution can differ with different locations, the number of features, and the type of design you want.

Here is the average cost estimation of developing a CRM app based on type:

Type of CRM AppCosts
Simple$40,000 to $60,000
Average$60,000 to $150,000
Complex$100,000 onwards

Here is the average cost estimation for developing a CRM app based on the location of the development team:

CountryCRM Development costsHourly rates
US$35,000 to $145,000$50-$150
UK$30,000 to $200,000$40-$100 
Ukraine$27,000 to $100,000$30-$70
India$10,000 to $100,000$15-$50

The following is a rough estimate of how much it will cost to develop those modules as part of a custom CRM.

ModuleCost
Sales$35,000-$60,000
Marketing$20,000-$32,000
Customer Support$30,000-$50,000

You can read our guide to know more about app development costs based on the industry in 2022.

Get Custom CRM Software Now

At Ailoitte, we can develop a fully customizable CRM that will be the right fit for your niche and business needs if you are determined to expand and grow your customer relationships.

Our custom CRM solution can help your business grow its efficiency, gain customers while retaining old ones, improve ROI, workflow, and meet emerging CRM challenges.

Get professional and cost-effective advanced custom CRM software for your business today! Contact us for a one-to-one consultation now.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to build my own custom CRM software?

1. Identify business goals that go into custom CRM software.
2. Choose the type of CRM based on your goals.
3. Determine the features to include in your custom CRM software.
4. Determine access levels for each functionality.
5. Create a budget for building your CRM system from scratch.

Does CRM have coding? If so, what technology would you use to build custom CRM software?

Here is a list of tech stacks that developers can use to develop custom CRM software:
1. HTML
2. CSS
3. JavaScript
4. AngularJS
5. Vue/React/Node.js
6. Python
7. Java
8. PHP
9. Laravel
10. .NET
11. Nest/ExpressJS
12. Symfony
13. Django
14. AWS
15. Microsoft Azure
16. Google Cloud Provider
17. Heroku

How much does it cost to make a custom CRM software?

The average cost to develop a custom CRM solution would be $35,000 to $50,000. But that can vary depending on your design/feature requirements and the location of the development team.

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