For organisations with a standard sales process and a limited team, off-the-shelf CRM products are usually sufficient. Bespoke development can be justified where one or more of the following conditions apply:
- The sales process involves industry-specific steps that can only be modelled indirectly in a standard product.
- Customers need to access the system to track order, service or project status.
- Bidirectional, real-time data exchange with ERP, production planning or field applications is essential.
- Per-user licensing cost has exceeded the cost of bespoke development and maintenance.
Scope of the first release
The most common risk in bespoke CRM projects is an over-broad first release. Our recommendation is to start with a release that digitalises the core sales process with limited integrations, and to extend it on the basis of usage data.