Why Your CRM Needs to
be Customized

Charlie Spaneas photo

Charlie Spaneas

What is CRM Customization?

CRM customization is the process of adding or modifying CRM features to fit the way you do business. Setting up your CRM to fit your processes increases user adoption, internal efficiency, and sales. Creating a custom CRM falls into three general categories.

Types of Customization

With so many CRM software choices, it’s often difficult to determine what level of customization your business needs. So how do you determine the level of customization that’s right for your organization? There are three main levels.

1. Basic-Level CRM Customization

Most CRM systems have a basic level of customization. Your CRM administrator can make simple changes like keywords and picklists. General users can make personal changes like configuring their own dashboards or widgets with “drag and drop” features.

2. Mid-Level CRM Customization

Some vendors offer more complex options to customize their out-of-the-box CRM solutions. Examples of these features include creating workflows, new forms, and light coding.

3. Advanced-Level CRM Customization

Advanced customization to your CRM system requires services from an experienced vendor like Clear C2. Certain features will need developers to build functionality with the original source code. They will also need to perform various testing of QA, regression, and analysis.

Common Reasons Businesses Customize their CRM

It’s very unusual for an organization to use a CRM platform out of the box without any configuration. You will need some type of customization. Even if it’s setting up user profiles, importing data, or creating widgets for dashboards.

Certain businesses may need extensive custom changes. This depends on the size of your organization and how specific your needs are. However, you won’t need to build a custom CRM from scratch.

Key Areas to Focus on Customization

Most companies use CRM as a decision-making tool to meet their financial goals. To provide the correct analysis, your CRM needs to gather data that is pertinent to your business. Cookie-cutter CRMs are too general to have custom fields.
 
They cannot provide the necessary accuracy and detail required. One of the first steps in customizing your CRM is changing field names and options. These terms and options should be the same sales processes your business uses.
 
Another important area of customization is workflow automation. Put in place all current business processes that all your teams use today. And take any manual processes and automate them.

You may need to leverage custom integration with non-CRM tools and services. This allows you to pull in pertinent data generated outside the system. For example, integrating your CRM with accounting or ERP software.

Finally, having this custom data on your desktop will not be enough. The custom application should also be available on your CRM mobile app.

Foster Increased System Usage

When implementing customizable software it is critical to get the buy-in from all your users. This will create a database with more reliability. Executives can then make decisions based on this data. 
Users must believe the software will boost their productivity and not be a burden.
 
A customized application based on your data processes will foster increased system usage. The user interface is easier to use and more intuitive. Increasing the user adoption rate.

User Adoption

When implementing custom CRM software, it is critical to get the buy-in from all your users. You want your team members to regularly use the system. Which will result in a database with more integrity. This is important since sales management uses the solution to base their decisions.
 
To get the necessary buy-in, users must believe the software will help them to be more productive. A customized application based on their daily processes will foster increased system usage. The user interface will be easier to use and more intuitive. Thus increasing the user adoption rate.

Benefits of Customizing your CRM

One of the main reasons businesses buy customizable CRM software is to be more responsive to the customer. As well as gain their loyalty and confidence. Here are a few benefits of a Customized CRM Solution:
  • Marketing personnel can target top prospects and assign leads
  • Custom reports
  • Sales reps will focus their efforts on accounts and opportunities that better optimize their time
  • Sales teams provide better sales pipelines and forecasts. Resulting in the correct product mix and the customer getting their orders on time
  • CSRs will offer better and more responsive customer service
  • Track customer details that are important to your business
  • The entire organization will look and feel more cohesive to the customer being on-point with their specific needs

Conclusion

When selecting a Customer Relationship Management vendor, it’s critical to pick one that will meet the specific needs of your business. Unfortunately, many vendors will force-fit your business model to their out-of-the-box software.
 
Others have partners who perform the customizations. Resulting in higher costs and continuing charging when your system needs adjustments.
 
When you have a two-vendor (partner) solution, there can be a gray area of responsibility to the client. And often, there is the potential for finger-pointing on who is accountable.
 
At Clear C2, we offer a consultative approach that focuses on configuring our software to fit our client’s business model. We do not outsource any part of our solution and provide our own professional services.
 
We deliver the appropriate expertise while being held accountable. Even well after the initial implementation is complete. Give us a call for a demo or a free 14-day trial. We’d love to help your business grow.
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