How to Build Your Own CRM Software from Scratch

Different CRMs for different purposes

There are several types of CRM systems that solve different tasks:

1. Operational: 

automate sales, marketing, and day-to-day business tasks.

2. Analytical: 

automate customer acquisition funnels, manage the retention and return of customers.

3. Collaborative: 

manage how your clients interact with your business through different channels.

To order a custom CRM software, you, first of all, need to define what features your business might need. Every company has different goals and needs, so, at this stage, we recommend focusing on your case and not repeating somebody’s else solution.

We divided the list of possible features into three groups by their importance: core, standard, and extra, so you can quickly determine which features you need on the MVP stage and which ones can be added later.

Core features

Create a CRM and implement these features to get straight to work.

1. Leads management. 
   Manage and track leads, increase customer loyalty, and plan future interactions. Make sure that you can easily automate the lead processing and quickly assign them to the right managers. This way, your customers will receive a better quality service as quickly as possible.
    
2. Task management. 
   Create and schedule tasks, meetings, send follow-up letters, schedule calls, and transactions, track deadlines, and much more. This feature allows your employees to assign tasks to their colleagues, set and receive notifications about all tasks or updates.
    
3. Dashboards. 
   Get quick access to the details of your company’s activities, including real-time reports, information about closed transactions and potential leads. With dashboards, you can access information about sent emails and customer responses, and other data provided through funnels, charts, and forms.
    
4. Basic reports. 
   Create reports on every aspect of your CRM functionality. You will be able to keep track of such indicators as open, closed and lost leads, lead conversion percentage, profit forecasts, and others. Using these reports, you can quickly analyze the current situation, compare it to the planned one, and draw conclusions.

Prices of building a custom CRM system

Every solution has a different price based on business needs and additional requests.

The CRM software cost and time may depend on the following factors:

1. The number of access types (roles) that you need. 
   For example, it could be Admin, Supervisor, Head Manager, Manager, Affiliate, and others. All these roles will have different access and options available.
    
2. Lead creation scheme. 
   Information can either be entered manually or automatically based on the available information. For instance, an email can be gathered via the contact form on a website, and a phone number while ordering goods.
    
3. Tasks setting and monitoring. 
   Tasks may have different rules, contain labels, and attributes; managers may have the ability to assign tasks, follow up on deadlines, receive reminders, and so on. These features require additional time for implementation.
    
4. Lead status updates. 
   The sales funnel can be implemented graphically, and managers can simply change the leads status by moving them along the funnel. In a more complicated option, all client information and history of interaction with your company are saved.
    
5. Customer interaction reports. 
   Make your own CRM system with custom reports. A lead scoring feature can be enriched with the customers’ interaction reports based on activity from social networks and other marketing channels.
    
6. Integration with other services and systems. 
   The development cost of this feature will depend on the number and the complexity of features.
    
7. Mobile CRM software access. 
   If you need a full-fledged mobile application, the development time may grow by an average of 50-60%.

Now, let's consider the approximate CRM software price of developing each individual feature and the time needed to implement it. This all will affect the total CRM cost.

How much does it cost to build a CRM system

What’s the best way to develop a CRM System

Usually, business owners prefer to cut expenses whenever it's possible. One of the points to consider is the cost and the quality of the team to hire. Having a professional, well-established team is a great option but it might seem quite expensive. On the other hand, if you go for a cheaper alternative and hire freelancers, you should keep in mind that:

1. You are hiring individual developers, not a team, which means that you will have to spend time on teambuilding, organizing the processes and setting up communication between the freelancers.
2. Some freelancers, of course, may be very skillful but some are not. It’s a real gamble whether you are getting a completed task, if at all.
3. A lot of them go MIA or spend so long doing a project that you are just wasting your time.
4. None of them can actually guarantee that you will get a high-quality, working product, because each person will be responsible for a single part of the process.

Ideally, it's better to look for a team that knows the industry well, has a history of successful projects, positive feedback from previous clients, and can help you to develop a high-quality MVP with full responsibility for the result and the deadlines.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN CRM SOFTWARE FROM SCRATCH?

Each dollar spent on custom CRM software development brings back about nine dollars profit. Although this sounds good, the truth is that it is possible only if the application is created in correspondence with commercial objectives. As we’ve already mentioned, hiring individual freelance developers doesn’t guarantee the software will work efficiently, nor the ready-made solutions that you can start using right away. The better solution you can choose in this scenario is to hire a reliable, professional team and build a CRM software from scratch.

However, it is costly and time-consuming, but it’s worth the money. Except for the perfect fit for your needs, custom CRM systems provide a seamless workflow and great scalability. So, if you are interested in improving your workflow and customer relationship, consider the following guide on how to build a CRM from scratch.

1. Pick the Type, Role, and Platform

In addition to the types of customer relationship management systems, there are also roles and platforms that you must choose in order to create a product that meets the requirements of your business. Since we’ve already covered CRM types, let’s take a look at its roles and platforms.

Roles in CRMs

As long as you add a user to CRM, you have to determine a specific role for the account, e.g. merchant or manager. Depending on the specified role, the account gets the empowerment to accomplish separate tasks. By way of illustration, the account with the assigned administrator role allows its user to monitor the activities, complete events, manage requests, and more.

When you develop a CRM software, be sure to prepare templates for common roles and provide the ability to easily create and configure various roles from scratch depending on the level of user access.

Platforms in CRMs

This is where the expert who is creating a CRM from scratch should pay attention to the hardware the company uses, be it PCs or portable computers running on Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. The client may also want to create a mobile app to reach more precise data, greater efficiency, higher traffic, and better service.

2. Define the Functions CRM Should Carry Out

As soon as you figured out what task you set for CRM, you can choose the main functions according to your business size.

• Individual businessmen usually create a CRM platform for managing and monitoring connections with the consumers’ database.
• Small businesses require instruments to automate sales inventory, leads, and performance, as well as monitoring the productivity of sales reps.
• Medium-size businesses need a tool that automates sales and marketing and improves analytics which enables creating effective marketing strategies.
• Large businesses use a fully-fledged CRM software combining all functions in one.

3. CALCULATE THE CUSTOM CRM COST

Building a CRM from scratch may vary depending on business purposes and requirements. As already mentioned in ‘Prices of building a custom CRM system’ section, there are many factors influencing the time and cost of building software. Additionally, you can find the approximate value and development hours of creating every single task or feature. Based on the size of a business you have and the functions you need to implement, you will be able to calculate the project cost.

4. Train the Team Members

Then you have to arrange the training for the developers and users of your team separately.

Make sure to start it long before the system is implemented, so the team will know how to use it in the right way. Consider a few ways to arrange the training:

• Choose a few team members who will get acquainted with a CRM platform in the late-stage creation process. This way, you will not take the whole team away from daily work. As soon as these few employees get an idea of CRM work principles, they will be able to share the manual covering each platform element with the rest of the team specialists.
• Reach an agreement with a web design agency about preparing textbooks and conducting employee training for an additional fee. This way your team will not be distracted from their duties at all. The additional CRM training provided by professionals is certainly worth the money.

5. Ensure Service Support and Keep Improving the Software

Despite the professionalism and extensive skills of the developers working on CRM software, there is a small possibility that minor errors and bugs will remain in the final project. While arranging the support service, you can easily eliminate potential issues. Here’s how you can organize it:

1. Send a request to a developer to fix the error on the site for an additional fee.
2. Look for professional technical support the developers can provide for a finished project during a specific period, e.g. a few days, weeks, or months.
3. Agree with the developers on the specialist care within set services.
4. Find solutions on the forums.
5. Optimize your CRM system using internal customer support to collect feedback from users, etc.

We hope this quick guide has helped you figure out how to create your own CRM system.

Recent CRM Projects at Gearheart

Here at Gearheart, we have vast experience in building your own CRM projects from scratch. A few of them include:

ShootQ — management CRM software for photographers. It lets the users create, send, and receive contracts, gives the clients an opportunity to book photo sessions online, track leads, and stay organized with the workflow tool.

Transpose — a project management tool. It makes it easy to organize and store a huge amount of data, as well as building clients’ databases, adding records, analyzing business progress, and more.

Timer — project management and time tracking system. This is the software Gearheart uses when working on the projects. It allows completing all management tasks including planning project sprints, tracking time, and progress, as well as generating salary reports and invoices, etc.

The process of a CRM software development at Gearheart.io

Once we start working on your project, a business analyst will get their head in the game and guide you through all development stages.

Sometimes, it may not be as easy for companies to instantly figure out how to develop a CRM software, prioritize features or define how your perfect system should operate. That’s why an outside perspective is so crucial.

Transparency is what we value the most, so we track the entire development process in Timer. This is our own software that we created to help our clients stay in touch with the web app development team, see how much has already been done and check on the tasks and deadlines. This information will help you plan any activities related to CRM system development and understand the overall process.

Leave your contact information, so we get in touch with you, answer your questions on how to build a custom CRM, evaluate the complexity of your project, and estimate how much it will cost.