Save money and win more business with a bespoke CRM development

Two things are notable about how organisations use software to collect and manage sales and marketing information about customers and potential customers.

Firstly, most small organisations don't really do customer relationship management in any kind of systematic way. At best they store data in ad-hoc collections of spreadsheets that are squirrelled away on the hard drives of different PCs. The data's usually full of inaccuracies, it's incomplete and is often almost impossible to report on. It's very difficult to get an overview of what you've got and any nuggets of genuine customer insight remain undiscovered.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum. Bigger organisations buy 'enterprise level' solutions that come with claims of easy configurability, forms to record customer interactions that can be shared across your business and the promise better management reporting. But these systems are expensive and often very difficult to implement. And they are usually more complicated than is required - employees find them cumbersome and many features remain unused. Every seasoned software developer has at least one story about a big CRM implementation that went badly wrong and was never finished.

There is a third way. A lightweight, bespoke CRM solution can be cost effective. It can be built quickly - time to develop and implement will compare very favourably with an off the shelf system - and right from the outset you get an exact fit with your business process. You can add new features only when you know you need them and you can roll out incrementally, prioritising particular groups of users within your business.

The thing to remember about a bespoke CRM development is that it doesn't have to be complicated. What most organisations want is consistency around data entry, a common view of customer engagement and the ability to quickly get data out of the system for further analysis. Off-the-shelf systems come with complicated workflows and configurability because they have to meet the needs of many different customers. You can do less better with a bespoke development.

A bespoke solution really comes into its own with reporting. We can build bespoke reports - .csv or MS Excel downloads - very quickly. It's only a few days work to create a standard set of reports that give different groups of users up-to-date and accurate management information. And more sophisticated users looking for custom reporting can still connect to the database with off-the-shelf business intelligence tools like Microsoft Power BI.

If you're tempted by a bespoke CRM solution then SkillsLogic can give you a same day estimate of cost and time to develop. We use a lot of pre-built components - tried and tested software that cuts the cost of development and keeps ongoing maintenance costs to an absolute minimum. We also host the the software applications we develop - so no need to worry about installing on site.