In recent times, practically, it’s impossible to build healthy customer relationships without a CRM solution that supports a robust, all-inclusive platform. Because of this reason, whether you need to do an investment in such software is an irrelevant question for the majority of business owners. Still, choosing between a traditional, off-the-shelf CRM and a custom CRM solution might be a daunting task.
Custom CRM solution has numerous benefits. Read on to gain an understanding of why devising and implementing a custom CRM solution right from scratch is fully a worthwhile investment.
Uniqueness
If for your business, you make the decision to develop your custom CRM solution, any software development company will ensure features that you need are included. This is indicative of the fact that the custom CRM solution will contribute to facilitating the specific needs of your business. However, more importantly, with the software in tow, you’re able to add more and more features and functionalities as per your needs. This advantage isn’t provided by identically designed readymade solutions. For instance, if you integrate AI-driven analytics into your software solution, it will provide you with an opportunity to carry out personalization of customer experience and give your business the much-needed competitive edge within the same market.
Simplicity
It’s a commonly known fact that standard out-of-the-box solutions have too many complexities. Since CRM solution providers attempt to target a wide-ranging array of businesses they usually cram their CRM solutions with several modules. As a consequence, companies, every so often, find difficulties in implementing such software and consolidating them within their workflows. Apart from that, it demands the active involvement of the employees as they need extensive time to know the methods employed to use the tool and adapt to it.
A custom CRM solution, on the other hand, consists of only those functionalities that your business is in want of. You can make adjustments to such a solution vis-a-vis your business processes at the very outset. As a consequence, the learning curve that end users follow will be considerably shorter in length.
Convenience
One of the most important criteria when opting for a CRM solution is user convenience. It’s a top-priority prerequisite. In particular, it’s imperative that your employees find it very easy to search for documents or certain information, establish communication with customers, and generate reports. Or else, you won’t be able to achieve the expected ROI.
But, turnkey CRM solutions with complex interfaces and functionalities, more often than not, turn into obstacles in allowing end users to work efficiently. Even if, training is imparted, end users make take a long time to trace the required function. However, in the case of a custom CRM solution, the situation is exactly the opposite. As such, a custom CRM solution is never outfitted with unnecessary, distracting features. Thus, it becomes plain sailing for employees to make maximal use of them.
Cost-efficiency
Even though, apparently, it’s counterintuitive, bringing a custom CRM solution to being, any day, is a highly cost-effective choice than buying an off-the-shelf CRM solution. Firstly, you don’t need to make any payments for those pieces of features you’ll never use. Secondly, no extra fees will be charged for any addition to the number of end users as your team experiences steady growth. Lastly, you’re never at the mercy of the vendor’s change in pricing strategies at their whims and fancies. Over and above when you use a custom CRM solution, the decision to make an investment in the system upgrade or addition of new features will be solely determined by the financial strength of your business and not the vendor’s willingness to gather additional earnings.
Performance
Through the development of a custom CRM solution, you get complete control of system performance. You’re in charge of deciding the to-be-used technology stack. Also, you’ve got the capacity to find out the exact time when the system platform calls for improvement. That’s the reason why custom CRM solution is handy, relevant, and high-yielding even during turbulence in market conditions or the time during which your business requirements call for a change.
As far as ready-made solutions are concerned, you need to be in agreement with whatever the software vendor provides you with. Initially, everything may appear quite satisfactory. But, there’s no surety your satisfaction level will remain unaltered as time passes by.
Flexibility
One of the foremost advantages of the development of a custom CRM solution is that with an accompanying bespoke solution, scalability comes easy, and to the same degree as your business expands. Custom CRM solution enables you to include new components given that they meet your business requirements. The solution also lets you change anything as and when the need arises.
Furthermore, a custom CRM solution is capable of offering a platform that can support other applications as well which may be required sometime in the future. For example, eventually, your business is expected to grow manifold. So, the odds are high that you might be needing additional software to be built for the expanded portions, teams, new departments, service lines, etc. Custom CRM solution makes room for the creation of a holistic ecosystem that has the ability to integrate numerous solutions in the overall business scenario.
Compatibility
With the purchase of a regular off-the-shelf CRM solution, you can do only those integrations that come along with the package. By and large, they include the most sought-after email marketing and social media platforms. In case your requirements are beyond these two standard functionalities you need to pay higher fees or may even find the solution lacking the features you desire to incorporate. Nevertheless, even if managing to make other software solutions integral to your turnkey CRM is possible, the guarantee doesn’t stay that the performance of the entire business network won’t be compromised.
Simultaneously, a custom CRM solution is designed keeping in mind the current IT infrastructure of your business. This implies you’ll hardly come across any problem while integrating other items of software with your custom CRM solution. In this manner, day-to-day team operations can be streamlined.
Security
All CRM solutions house plenty of confidential corporate and personal information due to which the security competencies of such software must fulfill the best-standardized practices. Ideally, third parties can access ready-made CRM solutions by means of updates. A custom CRM solution on the contrary is controlled by the in-house team. This makes it less susceptible to cyber-attacks. Also, the risk of losing vital data is almost always zero.
Wrapping up
A number of business owners show reluctance to develop a CRM solution from scratch because they consider it to be a more expensive, fancier version of identical prepackaged software. However, this notion is anything but correct. The development of a custom CRM solution introduces plenty of benefits that can be maximally leveraged to pull off remarkable ROI in the long term.
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