CRM System — What Is It? How Much Does It Cost?

A CRM program is no longer a competitive advantage for most businesses today; it’s a necessity. This applies to both large companies with thousands of clients and small businesses — technological proficiency in using tools can determine market success. What is a CRM system, what should you pay attention to when choosing one, and how much does it cost?

1. CRM — What Does the Acronym Stand For?

CRM refers to Customer Relationship Management software, programs designed to manage customer relationships.

Such an application stores customer data and the history of interactions between the company and its customers. This data can form the foundation for many aspects of the company — from sales to marketing to customer service. It can be used to design and automate processes and review reports from various data sources.

In many businesses, a spreadsheet still serves as CRM software, where employees input client data, add new sales opportunities, and update information on transactions. However, at a certain level of development — virtually any level beyond the very beginning — this solution creates more problems than it provides actual benefits. Data must be manually entered into the spreadsheet, which not only requires the manual effort of many people but also inevitably involves human errors. What’s worse, such a spreadsheet is simply a compilation of more or less meaningful data — the only thing you can do with it is generate a few charts at best.

In response to these needs, CRM systems were developed — programs that combine the benefits of working with a spreadsheet with hundreds of features that expand its capabilities. Some of the CRM programs available on the market include:

• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Pipedrive
• Bitrix24

Additionally, many systems, including task management systems, also have CRM modules. Examples of such tools in the market include TastyTask. Its simplified contractor management module offers an intuitive interface that facilitates collecting and organizing business partner data. You can easily add new records, edit existing information, and monitor the history of interactions with partners. Moreover, integration with the task module allows a seamless transition from contact management to the implementation of sales and marketing activities, leading to greater work efficiency and better customer service.

Source: TastyTask, tastytask.com

A CRM system is designed not only to collect data but also to enable further processing. What might this involve?

2. Sales in CRM

A common situation: a salesperson establishes a relationship with a potential client that could lead to closing a deal. In the “traditional” business model, the entire relationship resides on the salesperson’s phone and possibly in the aforementioned spreadsheet. Meanwhile, with a CRM system, the salesperson enters data about the potential transaction into the system — this data is linked to a specific contact and company in the database, and the Kanban board functionality allows for very convenient management of the entire process. At the same time, the head of sales can view all sales opportunities entered by the salespeople, which tightens up the entire sales process.

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Each column represents a separate stage, and each card represents a separate sales opportunity. Of course, you can customize the stages to match your sales process — after all, every company has its own unique, developed know-how.

Each sales opportunity can be supplemented with relevant data — from basic information such as transaction amount and product to custom details like discounts, additional notes, deadlines, and anything else deemed useful for closing the transaction.

3. What Is CRM? A Single Source of Data for the Entire Organization

Most CRM systems also allow for aggregating all client interactions with the company. Referring to the example above — each deal, i.e., each card, presents the full communication history upon clicking. You can view the automatically collected history of email exchanges, phone calls, and even client visits to the company’s website.

Originally, CRM systems were related almost exclusively to sales. Over the years, additional functionalities have been added, making a well-chosen and configured CRM system an enormous support for marketing and customer service departments. This is because all these departments can work with the same data. No more situations where marketing “does its job” without knowing what happens to the leads generated by marketers afterward — the salespeople have full access to information on whether the potential client came from a specific ad or another source, which subpages they visited, and if they had previously contacted the company. So, to the question “What is CRM?” one could answer: “the central source of truth in an organization.”

4. Marketing in CRM

What can marketing department employees do in CRM? Apart from elements such as integration with advertising systems, social media accounts, and content creation for websites, let’s focus on email communication.

Some CRM software provides extensive mailing functions. With a database of recipients (including full management of consent for data processing and commercial/marketing communication), you can send them personalized content related to general company news and based on past actions.

Example? A store selling pet accessories has a regular customer who buys a pet food set at certain intervals. With this data, shortly before the expected end of the purchased supplies, the store can automatically send the customer a reminder email — and with well-calculated timing, the purchase trigger has a high chance of being effective enough to lead to another purchase.

5. Assigning Tasks to Employees and Monitoring Progress

An extremely important element of management in CRM is the ability to assign tasks. Since all employees work with the same data, the assigned tasks can go far beyond the basic functions of an ordinary “to-do” list. In addition to delegating tasks to specific users, they are also linked to specific contacts or transactions, resulting in faster and more error-free communication within the team.

6. Reporting in CRM

Since we have data on clients, ad recipients, sales opportunities, employee tasks, and much more, it’s worth compiling them into useful reports. For the company president or department head, reports based on actual, almost automatically updated data are an invaluable source of knowledge and a huge time-saver. Which salesperson has the most open topics and generated the most profit last month? Which newsletter generated the most inquiries? Which products are selling worse than usual? In properly configured reporting dashboards, all this information will be visible and allow for a quick response.

This is what a report of traffic sources to the company website broken down by channels might look like:

Source: HubSpot

7. How Much Does a CRM System Cost?

The cost depends on the required features and the number of users. HubSpot, in its simplest Starter version with a few salespeople in the system, can cost as little as $30-50 per month. The cost of the Professional and Enterprise packages, equipped with advanced automations and integrations with external systems (e.g., invoicing system), can range from several hundred to even several thousand euros per month.

Due to the multitude of options, choosing a CRM is a strategic process for the entire organization — this decision will determine the “engine” of the entire company.