The modern customer expects outstanding experiences across all touchpoints, both online and offline. If these expectations fall through, customers feel frustrated, which can negatively affect their satisfaction and loyalty. The development and implementation of CRM software, which helps companies consolidate fragmented customer data, optimize customer-facing processes, and personalize communication and services, can be the key to meeting high customer expectations.
However, developing an efficient CRM system is not easy, as this process poses numerous challenges, ranging from poor data quality and security issues to user adoption complexities. Learning about these potential constraints in advance is critical for maximizing CRM ROI and achieving the desired project goals.
In this article, experts from Itransition, a company providing CRM software development services, highlight and give tips to overcome the four common challenges.
1. Choosing between off-the-shelf and custom CRM software
Regardless of its business niche and size, any company initiating a CRM development project inevitably faces a choice of whether to create a custom CRM solution or build one on top of an off-the-shelf CRM platform. Without understanding the differences and knowing the pros and cons of both options, making the right choice can be challenging. Here are the key differences to consider:
Platform-based CRM development
A company can implement a solution built on one of the popular CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, Odoo, or Dynamics 365, configuring and customizing it to fit its unique needs and workflows.
Pros
- This approach traditionally requires lower initial investment, as a company does not have to create CRM software from scratch
- In many cases, implementing an out-of-the-box CRM system can also be relatively fast
Cons
- In the long run, building and implementing a solution on top of a CRM platform can still be expensive due to recurring licensing fees
- A ready-made CRM system is unlikely to cover 100% of a company’s functional requirements out-of-the-box, so it can require additional customizations, which might increase a project’s complexity and cost significantly
Custom CRM development
As an alternative to the aforementioned CRM implementation approach, a company can create a CRM solution from scratch and equip it with any necessary functions and modules to address its unique business needs.
Pros
- Considering that a custom CRM system is initially created around the company’s requirements, it will cover 100% of your business needs
- By creating a custom CRM system, a company avoids financial costs associated with user licenses, which can reach tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
Cons
- Developing a CRM system from scratch is a complex process that includes coding, UX/UI design, testing, and other aspects of any custom development project, so that it can be pretty lengthy
- Given this complexity, custom development also requires a higher initial investment
2. Estimating CRM development cost and budget
Regardless of which CRM implementation path you choose, you have to calculate the cost of implementing a CRM system in advance, which is rather challenging considering the variety of factors that influence it. By calculating all, even hidden costs, you will be able to minimize project risks, such as budget overruns, later on. To accurately estimate the overall cost of CRM development and implementation, you can adhere to the following algorithm.
To begin with, you should outline your functional and non-functional requirements for the future CRM system because this will help define what exact solution will be needed. In particular, you can conduct brainstorming sessions with your CRM implementation team, consult with representatives of your marketing, sales, and customer service teams, and communicate with other stakeholders from your company to discuss the following questions:
- What specific functions should the system provide (lead generation, marketing automation, report generation, or something else)? Which of them are the most and least important?
- What data sources do we currently use? What customer data and in what format do we collect and store?
- What are our requirements for the CRM regarding its look and feel (should it have an intuitive interface, be easy to navigate, and so on)?
- Do we have any specific requirements in terms of system security, performance, scalability, and interoperability?
Once you have defined all functional and non-functional requirements, your CRM implementation team can move on to market research to see if there are any available off-the-shelf products that might match your needs. It is highly likely that your team will be able to find one or two potentially suitable CRM products. In such a case, your team should carefully review the pricing structures provided by these products’ vendors to calculate the approximate monthly costs if you decide to use one of these solutions (typically, the total price depends on the specific subscription plan, the number of business users, and the number of stored data records).
In addition to the solution pricing, you will also need to consider expenses associated with software development, adoption, and other project aspects. In particular, you need to consider the costs related to CRM integration and customization (if required). You should also take into account expenses related to purchasing equipment and servers (if you plan to host a CRM system on-premises). Not less importantly, you should factor in the cost of data migration, which may vary depending on the volume of data to be migrated and the migration tools you plan to use. Additionally, you should reckon in CRM solution maintenance, change management, and staff training.
If, during market research, your team finds out that none of the off-the-shelf CRM solutions matches your requirements, you might consider building a custom one from scratch and estimate how much it can cost your company. Like out-of-box CRM implementation, custom CRM development can vary in cost depending on different variables. Primary, the cost hinges on whether you choose an in-house or outsourced development model (in-house development typically requires a larger investment, as companies have to bear administrative expenses related to employee recruitment, salaries, training, and so on) and the functional scope of the CRM solution. Also, consider the price of hardware, data migration, user training, software integration, and other factors to calculate project costs accurately.
3. Running data migration smoothly and securely
Data migration is one of the most challenging and risky aspects of CRM implementation projects, becoming increasingly complex as the volume of data to be migrated grows. Any data error or leak during this process can disrupt your business operations and put customer data at risk, which can negatively impact your business reputation and profits. Fortunately, there are several ways that can help you ensure that the migration process goes safely and smoothly.
To begin with, after mapping your customer data and before migrating it to the new CRM system, your implementation team should perform data backup to a cloud storage or external hard drive. This way, the team can protect your business data against possible loss or corruption during the transit. After backing up the data, your team now has to extract it from one or multiple sources and load it into the new CRM system.
If there is a large data volume to be extracted and transferred, your team will likely use ETL software to automate data migration. In such a case, it is critical your team designs a robust ETL pipeline that meets your data extraction, transformation, and loading requirements. The pipeline should also be modular so that the migration process is easier to monitor and control. Additionally, data quality and security checks should be included in different stages of your ETL pipeline to help the team identify migration errors and resolve them quickly, thereby ensuring the completeness and accuracy of the migrated data.
4. Maintaining a high level of user adoption
A CRM development and implementation project can easily fail if a company сannot achieve high adoption rates among its business users. Therefore, it is critical to implement a robust user adoption strategy that includes well-rounded training for members of your marketing, sales, and customer service teams, as well as technical staff such as CRM administrators.
A robust strategy should include online courses, such as those offered by CRM vendors via their websites (Zoho Academy, HubSpot Academy, etc.) or those distributed by third-party learning providers (Udemi, Coursera, and other resources). Online courses allow users to access training content anytime and anywhere via the internet and learn at their own pace. Additionally, your strategy should include training seminars and webinars. During these sessions, CRM consultants can show your company’s employees how to use the new system in their everyday tasks, which is critical to developing the skills needed to work with the CRM software efficiently.
Final thoughts
Customer relationship management is one of the most challenging aspects of modern business. After all, customer demands are growing every year, and today, customers expect an outstanding experience across all channels. Developing and implementing a CRM system is one way to reduce this complexity, improve the efficiency of customer-facing operations, and increase customer satisfaction. Although developing and implementing a CRM system is challenging, the recommendations listed in this article can help you avoid the most common issues.
To maximize the ROI of CRM development and ensure the success of your project, you can also involve third-party CRM experts in your project. A reliable CRM partner will help you navigate the CRM software landscape, choose the right CRM solution, and customize it to your needs. Alternatively, a CRM partner can help you create a robust CRM system from scratch.