5 questions to answer before starting CRM application development
Customer Relationship Management systems have changed the way companies work nowadays. This conception implies various features and parameters, thus being rather complex to define in a universal way.
If you’ve ever thought about implementing a CRM system in your business, you might have had a number of questions considering the features, benefits and implementation process of CRM software solutions.
Here we will give you the answers to 5 questions that are most common among those who are interested in CRM application development.
1. What is CRM software?
Customer Relationship Management is obviously a system that helps manage customer relationships. There is no universal definition of a CRM system, it can be anyone that is suitable to use for tracking your customer relationship.
To be more explicit, it is practically any approach that is used to record and track any interaction with customers. You should pay attention to the word “any” in the last sentence as you actually can keep track of your customer relationship in your notebook or journal, a Google Spreadsheets file or with the help of specific software.
It does not have necessarily to be a complex software system. However, one usually implies a particular CRM software solution, for example, CRM web applications development. It should be mentioned that these systems are different for different users and involve varying functionality.
Businesses of different industries require different kinds of CRM application development.
A salesperson selling simple goods requires their customers’ contact information and some more types of data, while a gym usually needs additional information for each client such as a name of a personal trainer, usual visit times, supplementary services etc.
2. What are CRM software solutions used for?
CRM web applications development can solve a wide range of company challenges that vary depending on the type of business, target audience and the usual workflow in the enterprise. The most common are the following:
Statistics. Statistics is necessary for contemporary business. CRM software solutions enable to collect statistical data such as the average sum of the deal, KPI, and others.
Thus, you can analyze all the data, test hypotheses, conduct so-called validated learning, make reports and obtain information that will allow you to enhance the workflow in your enterprise.
Planning. Once you have statistical data, you can better decide what to do in the future. You can see which approaches and methods of communication with customers bring better results and thus improve the productivity of your sales or business development department.
Caring for every client. Having every act of interaction with customers recorded in your CRM system helps you avoid missing any single one. You will have all the available information on every lead and client, every call and every e-mail hence increase your customer retention and even customer experience.
Control. Every single salesperson may have his/her own work approaches to relationships with customers.
However, if you want to have more control over the sales and account management processes in your company, you should standardize the workflow that should be the same for all the managers in your company.
But you should also keep in mind that the system must be convenient to use, and that’s where custom CRM application development comes in handy.
Recognizing weak spots. When you have all data on customer relationship available and have conducted experiments, you can easily detect flaws in your sales workflow and solve these problems to improve the efficiency of your salespeople.
Thus, CRM application development (both custom web app development or mobile one) can become a very efficient solution for workflow automation.
3. What kinds of CRM solutions are the most useful?
Generally speaking, the main classification of CRM software solutions is between cloud and on-premise systems.
Cloud CRM systems. The data used in such systems is stored on the provider’s server and can be always accessed over the Internet. The main pro-argument of cloud systems is their accessibility.
You can access the system online from any device and any place: whether you are in your office, at a conference abroad or your favorite coffeehouse you like to work from.
On-premise CRM systems. This type of CRM systems requires installing specifically licensed software on particular devices in your company.
This approach obviously lacks flexibility, however, it provides you with higher security levels, and you also can improve the system according to your needs.
4. Does my business need a CRM solution?
Generally speaking, CRM application development is suitable for every business that has direct communication with clients, that is over meetings, calls, and e-mail.
If you have salespeople working according to their own methodology each, don’t have a clear overview of customer relationship in your enterprise and want to have more control over customer communication process, you should probably think about acquiring an access to a CRM system or custom web app development or mobile applications development as well.
5. How to choose a CRM software solution?
First of all, you should remember that there is no universal perfect CRM software solution for each business. Your choice should depend on your goals, purposes, workflow, target audience, budget, company size and the way of communication with clients in the first place.
Therefore, you should conduct a simple survey within your company to recognize your needs: talk to your salespeople and account managers, analyze your business processes and write down definite goals that you want the CRM system to help you achieve.
Then, decide whether you want a cloud or an on-premise CRM system and whether you want to buy an already existing CRM software system or request custom CRM application development.
Our Smartum Pro software development team provides you with intelligent solutions and useful tips for your business. If you are curious about our development process, take a look at the case study of our CRM application development project for Sony.
Also, we are always ready to help you to define the best solution, be it web or mobile app development or the integration of a complex software system.