CRM application development: 8 features you should include

 
CRM software solutions are an effective tool for increasing your enterprise productivity. If you’ve already decided to implement such a system in your enterprise, you should thoroughly think of which features the system must contain.

This is a serious task as you don’t want to miss the ones that are necessary for business process automation including the work of sales and account managers, as well as not to spend time and money on features that won’t be used.

In this article, we will describe the 8 key features for CRM systems that you should implement in your solution.

 
1. Planning
 
CRM software solutions are used not only for tracking operations but also for making predictions and forecasts on what approaches suit best based on the research and analysis of your previous interactions with customers.

That’s why you should not forget to implement this feature during your CRM application development. You can make it in the form of a calendar or project management board where you can set tasks to your managers, allow them to set reminders as well as to schedule calls, meetings and emails with leads and customers in their profiles.

It will allow you to set goals for your employees and thus to reduce stress and save time resources within your company.

 
2. Analytics
 
To make more effective planning you need data that could serve as a base to it. When your CRM software solution provides you with automated data processing and analytics, you have a better overview of the workflow and customer relationship in your business.

A basic CRM software system will help you get such figures as KPI, sale amount etc. Once you have the analytical data, you can use it for many purposes.

Thus, you can evaluate the productivity of every single employee, set the priority to every lead and customer, plan the work and adjust your human resource management approaches.

Or you can use it in your presentation the board of directors or investors. CRM custom mobile and web app development is a good choice for conduct various analysis and researches.

 
3. Localization
 
This feature is especially important if you have multiple offices in different countries. Think about your employees and don’t forget about localization during your CRM application development.

You surely want all of your sales, business development, marketing and account managers to work with the highest effectiveness possible, so you should make the workflow for them as convenient as possible.

English is a universal language in the contemporary world, however making your CRM software solution customized for all of your employees regardless of their location is still a good idea. So, make sure to include versions in different languages in your CRM application.

 
4. Templates
 
Templates will allow you to save you time and hence money. Because time is money. You can implement templates for emails, call scripts, business proposals and workflow algorithms for different occasions that can occur during communication with your leads and clients.

It will be especially useful and convenient for novices who work for your organization. It will help them learn the occupation faster and it also will simplify knowledge transfer. And for more experienced employees, this will fasten and optimize their workflow.

 
5. Listings
 
Email marketing and calls are an effective tool for acquiring new leads and customers. It’s obvious that you have to use various lists with data on every person to contact.

When the listing management is not organized properly, it can become quite confusing and difficult not to get tangled up in all this information and not to mix the areas of responsibility of different managers.

If you have a CRM software solution which enables synchronizing this information, you will avoid situations when two managers are going to “deal” with the same client and some other lead or client being overlooked.

 
6. Calls integration
 
As mentioned above, calls are a great tool in sales and are crucial in account management and dealing with your clients in most of the cases. Probably your managers use whatever calling software they want or maybe even a real phone. Or you may be using a specific product to make all calls in your company.

However, if you want to implement a CRM software solution, you should be aware that it is a great means of unifying the workflow in your company. Fortunately, it is no longer a problem to integrate a tool for calling during the CRM application development.

The system will schedule, conduct and record calls automatically, track them, allow your managers to make concise comments during the call. Due to such an automation the amount of work to be done manually decreases.

 
7. Third-party services integration
 
This case is similar to the previous one. You probably use the various software in your company for different goals such as a document management system, project and time management tools as well as ERP and BPA systems.

Integration of all these systems seems quite useful as it will reduce confusion and time consumption. Such an integration will allow you to transfer and exchange data and information easily within your company.

The implementation of this feature may be quite a problem if you use complete software, and that’s where custom CRM application development comes in handy.

 
8. Mobile version
 
And last but not least: going mobile. Smart devices have become a part of our lives. They are used both in the B2C and B2B sectors. If you want to increase the flexibility of your CRM system, don’t forget about mobile applications development for your CRM system.

This way, your managers will be able to use the system wherever they are and whatever device they have by their side. So it is convenient to have a mobile version along with your CRM web application.
 

One of the most spread CRM software solutions is Salesforce platform which offers CRM system to automate and optimize various business processes.

For example, it provides three efficient products: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and ExactTarget (Marketing Cloud). More details about Salesforce CRM and app development you can find in our article about 6 facets of Salesforce application development services.
 

However, there are still a lot of technologies and solutions that can be used for building and integrating CRM software.

Smartum Pro software development team is always ready to provide you with intelligent recommendations for your project and solutions for your business including mobile and web applications development.

Take a look at the case study of our CRM application development for Sony if you are curious about our development process, technologies used, and so on.