How to develop custom CRM software for your business

When you will be setting up your company, there will be customers involved. It will not be possible for you to look after all the thousands of customers at the same time. So, what will you do? You will opt for a CRM system that will help you maintain the customer base. Customer relationship management helps to manage the company’s interaction with the present and prospective customers. A CRM uses data analysis to improve the business connections between the customers, mainly focusing on customer retention and eventually when your sale is growing.

Building a CRM is particularly a good option since it will help you to maintain a good relationship with your customers in such a way that it will also benefit the business. We at Vyrazu Labs develop CRM software with only one intention, customer satisfaction. Even you can build your own company and create your own CRM but your empire will only establish when there are people involved in your business. These are the people who are your target audience i.e your company’s only way to success. With a healthy approach, you maintain the customer’s experience you can make sure that they stick with you for the long-term.

In this article, you will learn about the different types of CRM, 

The functions of a custom CRM software

An automatic service module helps the agents to handle communications with the clients. This means any interaction with the clients, be it emails, notifications, tickets, etc will be generated through your custom CRM software. Before we can start talking about how to build a CRM we will have to consider the functionalities of a CRM system. 

There are three functionalities which can be stated in this context:

The first one being: The base of knowledge– This will make the customer support tool very agreeable. The agents who are working on the support of the company will be able to correct, save and publish articles for the service of the company.

The second one is: Agent console and Help desk– The customers post their request through different channels like messages, chats, tweets, emails, etc which has to be centrally interfaced for the support agents to view the details. By using an advanced help desk the support users will be able to prioritize the job and send tickets via texts or emails. This help desk will also be responsible for creating ticket groups and labels. 

The third one is: Analytics of Service– The service module will assemble statistics on customer issue records, customer requests, and track when the issues are getting resolved by the customer service executives. The analytical past will compile and organize information from all kinds of sources like calls, emails, tickets, and social media channels.

Different types of custom CRM software 

Building a CRM is beneficial, we know that from the introduction. Now, you have to understand which types of CRM will help you through. After you have an understanding of which CRM does what you will easily be able to choose a CRM that will best suit you. 

There are four types of custom CRM software which are:

• Analytical CRM 

If you want to build a CRM that will help you to source a huge amount of information for multiple areas of communication and processes, this one will be ideal. In this type of CRM system, it provides statistics, insights, analytical data, etc. building a CRM of this kind will help you plan and get an in-depth understanding of the work that is being carried out. It will benefit you through real-time data and analytics so that you can focus on the present situation of the company. 

• Strategic CRM

If you have a customer-centric company (all companies are), i.e. it has to deal with customer information and details as a prime task then building a CRM which will help you to gather the data on the customers in sort of a knowledge base which means it will be responsible for collecting, segregating and applying information about the customers and the trends of the market so that it can make up a better value proposition for the customers. This will help you to build a long-term customer relationship.

• Operational CRM

When you create your own CRM building an operational CRM will focus on smooth-running and making the workflow automatic for jobs like marketing, sale and customer service. If your company is based on such tasks you will also have additional features like pipelining sales, helpdesk, and lead contact management.

• Collaborative CRM

As you build your CRM you might be thinking about improving communication and better teamwork with a transparent data sharing environment this CRM system will give you great results. This CRM will facilitate you with chats, collective discussions, and shared boards. The users will be able to share stream activities and files.

The benefits of building a custom CRM software

Even though there are many turnkey solutions in the market that you can start using right now there are certain limitations to that, however, building a CRM can solve that. There are mainly three benefits of custom CRM development.

• Scaling 

When you build a CRM it will work as a self-contained system. You will be able to build new applications for the different departments while all of them will have a single database. This will benefit from organizing the entire workforce in one system under the same umbrella. If you are thinking to pull these off using a turnkey you will first have to find dealers who will provide APIs for developers. Then you will have to pay for every user in the system and every additional program that you would want to add. 

• According to your requirement 

When you are building a CRM you will have to take care of the features that are to be included. There are developers who have a tendency to stack the CRM with a load of features establishing a bigger market point of view. This will result in overburdening the system. Have you heard the proverb that three cooks spoil the broth? Something like that happens here as well. Hence a perfect blend of ingredients is always necessary. This means that when you are building a CRM you have to blend in the features that will necessitate you and your team. 

Else you might have to pay a lot for the already built CRM software. If you have a system that is over stacked you will have to teach your team how to use which one and when to use it. A lot of functions can often confuse people and many important data can get lost in the process. If you build custom CRM software you can scale it, reform it, change it, expand it, and modify it according to your needs. You will only have to pay for the website development not for using it. 

• Improve Business 

You can improve your business by using a CRM as it is capable of doing more than a turnkey solution. This is especially necessary when you are trying to integrate numerous platforms for different departments. All the features that are crafted for a particular CRM are used for that department itself as a unique feature. If you are planning to make a custom CRM development it will rather be beneficial for you to integrate the features that later when you require it. 

If your company already uses some software to simplify the business process then it will be difficult to introduce a turnkey platform. However, this would not be a problem for a custom CRM platform. There will be smooth data dispatch from one department to the other with fast processing and sharing. This will help you to save a bulk of time as well as provide a smooth interdepartmental interaction in your company.

Building a custom CRM software: Integration of features

When you will build a CRM it will have some features. Now, these features are completely dependant on the needs of your company. These features will be used to manage the customer relationship. 

The Basic Features

1. Manage Tasks
2. Reminder setter
3. Calendar editor
4. Contacts management
5. Simple report generator

When you make a custom CRM software you will have to integrate these features. These features will help you manage simple tasks such as managing contacts for the company. The calendars editor will help you to make changes in the calendar as per the important dates with events.

A report generator will help you to generate reports on the data, work done, etc. The reminder setter will help you to remember everything that is necessary for the company. Suppose you have a load of important tasks it is possible that you might forget one or the other hence, a reminder will be important. 

The Descriptive Features

When you have a set of basic features that will assist you to do the basic tasks of the company you will need a set of features that will actually work behind managing tasks for the company. A custom CRM development will bring you the necessary items that you will want to add. Let me share a few of them which is often asked for integration. These are very common features your company might have further needs.

• File sharing

In a company one of the most important tasks is to share files. With this feature, you will be able to share files in all the departments by misplacing them while departure. The system will store records and files which is important for the company. This feature will also allow you to see who is working on which file and what are the changes they are making. 

• Accessing from mobile

Let us consider that the CRM will be managed by the sales operatives, they are equipped with modern-day technology which they can use at any time. It has been seen that customers tend to connect with the executive even after work hours looking for a solution as immediate as possible. Hence, the executive will be able to work from anywhere they are. The records say that mobile access has increased the yearly sales goals as it is more efficient to work on a handy device. 

For integrating mobile access in your custom CRM software it is better if the work is done on native applications separately like Java for Android and Swift for iOS. This will certainly affect the development costs. You can save some cost by adapting the website CRM accessed from the mobile device only if you do not have to integrate any other special features in the mobile device app. 

• Invoice generation

Different sales companies require this feature. *If you have a sales company as well as read along or move to the next point. In different sales companies generation of invoices is the prime task of the CRM. They often use different invoicing options so that the invoices can be organized accordingly.

These generally are status tracking of the invoice, invoice history search, rapid invoice for shipping it to the clients, and many more such options. When this is done you will be able to integrate this and other features with any software that you require. You can include different types of internal accounting software as well as a third party payment system. You will be able to sync an accounting software that you use like Quickbooks in your CRM using API. 

• Crucial reports

The curial reports are something by which you can check the insights making this a very useful CRM feature. The reporting of insights and tracking methods will entirely depend on the business needs that you have. The other factors such as sales stage, lead type, and demographic data are crucial information which is not the case for many.

• Communication tracker

The interaction that takes place between your customers and your executive will be recorded for a better customer service this feature is entailed to record the cooperation history and all the conversation that went on. Depending on this function the customer can be shifted to any other manager without having to spend hours filling them up on what was the problem and what happened afterward. 

• Pipeline view

If you integrate this feature while you build a CRM you can see all the sales structures in a systematic and simple view. This division is needed as it allows you to check the different work going on in different fields. Such as following up on new contacts, leads, qualifications, and many more such details. If you have been losing leads often you will be able to keep a track on the stage of a lead processing is weak you will be able to find out the reason and solve it accordingly. This feature is a happy feature as it will not let anything important go out of sight.

• Social media

Integrating social media is very important as it is seen that 52% of sales executives use social media for marketing as your maximum customers are connected with social media and sales look better when it is done on a platform widely used. You are building a CRM so you might think that it is unnecessary but if you add social media trends such as hashtags which will help you to track social mentions and make better the user interface by replying to messages with feedback or a review.

• Marketing via email

If you want to track the interaction that you had with each customer you will need this feature when you build a CRM. As you will have to spend a lot of similar emails to your customers. If you want your CRM to send automated emails to your customers using different letters for diverse groups of customers on company prospects. This feature will also allow you to organize the emails in a sequence of letters that are being sent by the system according to the applied parameters for the same.

custom CRM software development: Advanced features

We have already seen the features that will be involved when you build your own CRM. Let us look at some advanced features which will be involved in this process of making a custom CRM.

• Syncing with other internal software

A company has a lot of software running within it. This software needs to be synced in one so that the interaction going on in the company can be done under one platform. This is valid for an enterprise as there is no limit to the software running in these kinds of companies for customer relationships. The software can be listed as their functionality such as:

1. Warehouse management software (WMS)
2. Logistics management system (LMS)
3. Enterprise resource planning system (ERP) 

• Third-party integration

Within a company, there are different sections working under different titles. Depending on the positions of these different departments multiple tools can be used to make the workflow creamer. There is no use of building an analog for these tools just for using them in the company. The best thing that you can do is to include everything in your custom CRM. On the other hand, similar integration will be a wise decision in your custom CRM development. It will save a lot of time on data duplication from different systems. Be it anything documents, letters or anything else from a G suite development. 

• Tracking customers referrals

It is an age-old rule for customers, they believe when someone else tells them something is good or bad. As a customer has used the services or products they will know the quality of the product. Hence referrals are very important when and it increases the outlook of the referrals program. If you already have a group of leads which initiated from your customers. You will want to keep track of the leads generated depending on the performance of those customers in your custom CRM. By integrating this feature you will be able to track leads who have become customers and have purchased or ordered something from your company.

• Chatbots

When you create a CRM you would want it to be an automatic system, right? The employees of your company will not have to do the extra work to improve the overall efficiency of the custom CRM that you will build. When your employees will be busy bringing in business to the firm the chatbots will ensure to work as their support system. It will also help you to make a lot of tasks automatic. The chatbots will be responsible for answering the FAQs, will help you to organize a meeting with your colleagues by setting reminders of different tasks and will help the freshers in the company to get answers to relevant questions. 

• Managing calling process

When you have a big company you have a division for call management. The executives are responsible for taking calls right from your custom CRM software giving you the entire details of how many hours of work they have done and how many cases they have resolved for the customers. This usually is for those companies who have to call a lot of clients on a daily basis.

• Scoring leads

You can score leads from the automatic CRM system and focus your workforce towards the potential customers who are ready to purchase or are planning on purchasing. You can build it into a scoring system so that you can keep track of those leads. Suppose you enroll it from 1 to 10, 1 to 50 or 1 to 100 that is up to you. You will be able to determine this by looking into the areas that are important for your business. Say for example the behavior on the entire website, the number of emails opened and who opened those emails, and pieces such as age, revenue, location, and other statistics. 

Focusing on the important areas you can organize them in an ascending or descending order. Suppose the people who have filled the details you had asked for will get a certain score and the ones coming from your target country can have a slightly less score than that. This will help you to find out the fields as and when you want and also check the score of a particular customer.

Create your own custom CRM software

CRM Software for service purpose

If you have a company who provides help to a lot of companies to deliver custom services you will have to make a CRM system that will not only work as a software but also work as a service provider. The modern-day CRM providers have made sure to implement this feature in the products they craft. When you will be able to develop a SaaS solution it will provide you with a lot of assistance and it has also gained good amount of fame for the work that it has been producing. 

If you build a SaaS solution you will be able to rapidly dispatch and update your software and you will be able to provide the same custom CRM software for all your clientele. Not only that your customers will be able to access your CRM from any device they want and reducing the subscription fee for using your custom CRM software can also be an option as you will be able to cut a lot of cost by using this kind of a CRM system. 

Empty and Full-box custom CRM software

An empty-box CRM as the name suggests does not have any special capabilities and the employees of your company will have to manually enter the data gathered from each client in the system. This, of course, is a tiring job especially for the sales executives who will have to spend more time filling up these details than actually speaking with the leads they have assembled.

For getting rid of this problem the modern CRM providers like Lithium, Salesforce, Nimble, etc have introduced deep integration with social services. That includes social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook who have a service of creating user profiles automatically only when the user is filling up the necessary information that is being asked for. Integrating social media into your CRM system is very useful and important as well.

Artificial Intelligence in your custom CRM software

Nowadays, AI is into everything that we use, say Facebook, Twitter or Gmail it is AI-controlled for better performance. Artificial Intelligence will help to make the system predictive which will benefit your business. The impact of AI and machine learning have left a mark on the CRM that we use in the present era.

Take for example Pardot which is equipped with a lot of modern-day technicalities which help in making the company smooth running. It has features like behavior-based lead scoring, the sleek structure of lead management, easy email marketing system and AI-powered campaign reports. There are other examples like Hubspot, SharpSpring, MailChimp, Leadsquared, ActiveCampaign, Customer.io, etc. 

The custom CRM software development process

When you start with the development process you will have to make sure that you get an extremely skilled team who will work on the development and will ensure that you have the exact same CRM features that you had assigned the team for. For the custom CRM development, you will have to make sure that your plan is ready on what to include and what not to include. After you produce the team with your lists they will start building the software.

You will be able to add or remove features in between the development process and later when it is made you will be able to update the software with new features if required. A custom CRM software is developed using any kind of programming language such as Java. This actually depends on the type of CRM that you will ask to build. You can also use a free and open-source CRM and built your custom CRM software on top of it.

The time and cost involvement in custom CRM softwaredevelopment

Depending on the features that I could share with you in this article I have made a rough sketch on how much time it will take to develop the software and how much will it cost you to make a CRM. This data is derived from our company as per the $10/ hour charts. 

To build the basic features such as managing contacts, setting reminders, editing calendars, managing tasks, and simple report generation will take a total of 460 hours costing you $4600 for integrating all these features.

The rough sketch of the essential features will round up to be a work of 590 hours which is $5900 for all the features i.e. communication tracker, email marketing, sharing files, accessing from the phone, pipeline view, invoice, social media inclusion, and custom reports.

For integrating the advanced features which as mentioned are chatbots, scoring leads, managing the calling process, third-party involvement, syncing internal software, and tracking referrals will take 600 hours which will cost $6000. The total amount that you will have to pay for these features is $16,500. 

There might be an additional cost as I have this model depending on the data that I had however, you might have other features essential for your company that you would need to include in your custom CRM. This cost structure has been given so that you can get a general idea of the packages that we provide. Remember that these are not mandatory features you are privileged to use any feature that you want according to the purpose of your company.

Conclusion

I hope that this article was useful and I could answer all the questions you had on building a CRM system. As you can already see we have a low-cost chart that is because we are an Indian company that will be able to meet all your requirements maintaining the quality of the product like any other good company.

I should mention that we are a leading software development and design company who can meet any requirement that you have on development and design as well as fill you up on your business if you are an entrepreneur you can seek out business tips from us. We provide a wide range of services which will amaze you. Feel free you leave a comment or feedback as you please. Comment on anything that I missed out. Have a nice day/night ahead.