Should We Buy a Readymade CRM or Build a Custom CRM?, you might have come across this question while planning to have a CRM solution in your business.
Well, In business there is always a build vs buy situation. But CRM is not something you should plan to build in-house.
In this article, I will highlight some reasons why you shouldn’t build a CRM in-house.
Let’s dive into the reasons directly.
1: Building a CRM in-house is not easy.
Some people think, that to build a custom CRM, All they need to do is hire a few developers, tell them their requirements and that’s it.
Well, If it was that easy and simple, why do most organizations prefer ready-made CRM over Custom CRM?
Most of the time, when organizations design a CUSTOM CRM, they get it designed to address their current challenges. And it’s kinda difficult for organizations to predict future challenges.
And as a result, you will require constant updates and changes in your CUSTOM CRM.
And that’s when CRM vendor’s expertise comes into the picture.
As they have designed CRM for companies across several industries.
They already know the challenges of an organization and the best possible solution for it.
As the solutions offered by them are tried and tested, it doesn’t only solve your current challenges but are also designed to address future challenges.
2: Deployment Time is high
The digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight.
In both situations whether you build a CRM in-house or buy it from a vendor, It will take time.
However, The deployment time of CUSTOM CRM is relatively very HIGH.
Because first, it would take you a considerable amount of time, to build a CUSTOM CRM. And then it would require additional time to implement the built CRM into your organization.
On the other hand, if you get a ready-made CRM. It takes a vendor almost no time to make little tweaks and changes to meet your business needs.
And most importantly,
CRM vendors are well aware of the challenges of CRM Implementation. This further reduces the implementation time.
3: CRM implementation cost for in-house CRM is high.
Building and Implementing CUSTOM CRM not only requires additional time but it requires additional resources.
You will not only need a team of developers but also an expert who knows the ins & out of CRM.
And even when your CRM will get ready, you will still need developers to fix bugs or meet the needs of your future challenges.
When you add up all these present & expected future costs, you would realize that buying a ready-made CRM would be relatively easy, less time-consuming, and less expensive.
IN addition to this, when you get a ready-made CRM, if you face any challenges while working with a CRM, you get immediate support from the team of experts from the CRM vendor’s side.
4: CRM Can’t be built in Isolation
Now what I mean by that,
CRM can’t be built in isolation, it has to be integrated with many other solutions.
When organizations are building it in-house, they often forget to think about various CRM integrations.
Say, for example, your CRM can be integrated with your website. So when anyone fills up an inquiry form, the same data gets reflected in your CRM.
Just imagine how time-saving this integration could be if your daily inquiry flow is in hundreds or thousands.
Same way, the CRM can be integrated with your accounting as well as call center solution. This simple integration can drastically improve the productivity of your team.
CRM vendors are very well versed in CRM integration possibilities.
5: Building CRM is Not your core Expertise
As a business owner, your focus should be only on growing and expanding your business, you and your existing team are experts and should thrive to become experts in that domain.
When you build a CRM in-house, your focus shifts from growing your business to building a technology that you and your team are not very versed in.
Unnecessarily, your existing resource will get used up in building something which is going to be of no use later.
We have many clients who initially were using the custom-made CRM, who then later shifted to our CRM.
So when should you build a CRM?
When should you build CRM?
The only situation when you should build a custom CRM is When you think that your business processes are different from existing businesses.
And possibly there is no vendor who has designed a CRM to handle the processes of your business, then only you should build a custom CRM.
Otherwise, it’s always wise to get a ready-made CRM.
Most of the time businesses are not sure whether their business even needs a CRM to manage their business process.
