When do you know that it’s time to build or acquire a CRM?
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IT Manager in Construction9 months ago
I guess an IT department should propose it since the beginning. In my view it should be available when the project starts.CIO in IT Services8 months ago
I have found value in free or inexpensive CRM tools in companies 5 people or less. Being intentional about managing your customer relationships is really important regardless of company size. And there is so much complexity in sales process that I would not want to manage it in a spreadsheet, even as a solopreneur. But another way to look at the question might be, when is the right time to begin to put rigor into your sales process? There I think the more sales people you have, the more important a good sales process is. If you have 3 or more sales people, you should have a clear process that you follow for sales and a pipeline that can be shared with the leaders of the company. VP of Technology8 months ago
I think the decision to use a CRM is a critical partnership between sales practices, customer relationships and IT. Additionally, I do not believe this is an IT decision solely. I feel a CRM is needed when the ability to effectively and efficiently manage customer data without it, is no longer possible.As a side-note, I'd suggest that if you are considering a CRM it may be time to consider an ERP. In my experience, an ERP may include some or all of the CRM functionality you are looking for.
Strategic Banking IT advisor in Banking8 months ago
I think that deploying a CRM within an organization could be a huge challenge depending on many factors such as: the size of the organization, the business objectives, the integration to be done.We built basic CRM functions inside our applications (reminders, alerts, comments, follow-ups). Then, it became obvious that we won't develop a complete CRM on our own.
We first picked one. A leader on the market. Then, no one seems to clearly understand what we should do with it! Use it for sales pipelines? Use if for relationship management? Use it as a primary tools (like this is your main daily app)? Integrate with our core banking to retrieve infos?
And we kept spinning around for 3-4 years.
Then... we switched to another CRM. And we spent 3-4 years since then going down the same path.
My 2 cents: picking a CRM isn't the biggest challenge! It's to use it properly! But acquire one, don't develop it. You'll never get up to par with all the functions that any CRM provide.