What Are The Benefits Of A Bespoke CRM Over Off The Shelf Software?

Where a bespoke CRM earns its place

The distinction we see most often with clients is this: off the shelf CRMs are built to manage relationships and sales activity. They're not built to run the rest of your business's operational processes. That's where the case for a custom system opens up.

A few examples from projects we've worked on show what this looks like in practice. We have developed platforms for construction businesses that handles everything from morning vehicle checks through to timesheets, job scheduling, site photos and invoicing. We have insurance clients who have bespoke platforms that manage quoting, invoicing and policy documentation together.

Professional services clients we work with enjoy bespoke software that holds all customer data, schedules work, generates PDF letter templates and records every call. And we have clients who have generates detailed compliance reports directly from the systems we have built with data collected using mobile devices and tablets while their teams are out on the road.

None of those are pipeline management problems. They are operational processes that happen to need a customer record sitting underneath them, and that is a genuinely different kind of system to build.

Why off the shelf platforms struggle with this

Off the shelf CRMs are designed to work for a huge range of businesses at once, which means they're built around the common ground of managing leads and relationships, not around the specific operational processes any one industry needs. You can often bolt extra functionality on through add ons or workarounds, but you are usually fighting the platform rather than working with it, and the result tends to be more fragile and harder to maintain than something built for the job from the outset.

A simpler system for your team, built around what you actually do

When we build a bespoke system, we are not trying to recreate a generic CRM with your logo on it. We are building around the actual process your business runs, whether that is job scheduling, document generation, compliance reporting or something else entirely, so the system includes exactly what you need and nothing you are never going to use!

A different way of thinking about cost

Off the shelf CRMs are typically priced per user, per month, which is a reasonable cost for genuine pipeline management functionality. A bespoke system works differently, covering the build itself along with ongoing hosting, support and maintenance. Whether that is better value depends entirely on what you are trying to run through the system, which is really the question this whole article comes back to.

So how do I know which camp I'm in?

Ask yourself what your CRM is actually being used for day to day. If the answer is genuinely "managing leads and a pipeline", stick with an off the shelf platform, it's doing its job. If the answer includes scheduling, project management, compliance records, invoicing tied to service delivery, or anything else beyond managing a relationship, that's usually the sign a bespoke system would serve you better.

If you are in the process of weighing up whether a bespoke CRM solution would be more appropriate for you, it is also worth reading our thoughts on choosing a development partner for a system like this, since the questions you should be asking apply just as much here as to any other bespoke web system.

Studio44 have been developing bespoke CRM systems and web applications for many years and have worked on many successful projects in that time. If you're trying to work out which camp your business falls into, get in touch, we'd love to talk through your options and see if we can help.