Custom CRM development, shaped to the way your team sells and follows up

Who is a custom CRM for?

A custom CRM suits a business whose sales don’t fit the shape of a standard CRM, or have outgrown the tools the team has stitched together: a shared inbox, a spreadsheet of leads, a subscription with fields nobody fills in. We build for three kinds of business, and the CRM changes with each:

• Established local businesses: the CRM has to catch each enquiry, whether it arrives by phone, email or the website, and give it an owner and a next step.
• Multi-location and regional businesses: each location works its own pipeline, new leads go to the location that serves them, and the owners see every location side by side.
• National businesses: accounts carry many contacts, sales often run by territory, brand or division, and the CRM has to fit the finance and support systems already in place.

Our pricing page explains how we tell the three levels apart.

When is a CRM you subscribe to the better call?

Often. If your team sells through contacts, a pipeline, email and a few standard reports, a CRM you subscribe to already does that, and its vendor keeps it updated. When that’s the case, we’ll tell you on the call to subscribe, and our CRM implementation work covers setting one up properly.

A custom CRM is worth weighing when one of these is true:

• Your records aren’t only contacts and deals: a freight lane, a title order or a service contract has stages and fields of its own.
• The CRM has to run more of the work: quoting, scheduling or billing in the same system, with no copying between tools.
• The team works around the product: spreadsheets beside it, fields used for things they weren’t meant for, and steps done by hand because its settings can’t express them.
• The connections you need aren’t offered: an operations system, an older database or a partner’s portal that the subscription can’t reach.

Low-code development sits between the two. Our guide to custom CRM vs off-the-shelf walks through the decision, and build vs buy software covers the same call for other systems.

What do CRM development services cover?

CRM development services are the work of designing, building and running a CRM, or extending one a business already has, such as Salesforce or HubSpot. We write the whole CRM in code, so its records and screens follow your process. The work covers:

• The map: how a lead arrives, who works it, the stages a deal passes through and what happens once it’s won.
• The design: records, fields, stages and screens, arranged around the people who work in them daily.
• The build: the database, the screens, access by role and the rules that move work along.
• Connections: email, calendar, website forms, billing and the other systems the CRM has to exchange data with.
• Migration: the records from your old CRM or spreadsheets, brought across before launch.
• After launch: a monthly plan that keeps the CRM running as the business changes.

How do you build a CRM system?

The work starts with how your team sells. Before anything is built, we write down how leads arrive (a web form, a call, an email, a referral), who picks each one up, what has to happen at each stage of a deal and what the team needs to report. That map decides the records, the fields on each one and the stages in the pipeline.

The first version covers the daily work and little else. RaftLabs’ cost guide describes a first version as contacts, pipelines, an activity timeline, email sync, reporting and access by role. Below it sits what RaftLabs calls a bare-bones build: contacts and deal tracking, with no automation. Automations, extra reports and new connections are easier to get right once the team is using the basics, because by then you know which ones matter.

While it’s built, the CRM sits on a private preview that your sales team can open and try before launch. Then the records come across from the old tools, the CRM goes live, and it runs on our monthly plan.

What goes into a CRM we would build?

That depends on the level the business is at. For an established local business, it’s one pipeline, contact and company records with the history of each call, email and meeting, email sync, and a short set of reports the owner checks. For a multi-location business, it adds a view per location, rules that send each new lead to the location that serves it, and permissions so a manager sees one location while the owners see them all. For a national business, it adds accounts with many contacts, territories or brands, single sign-on, and connections into the finance and support systems.

The records change with the industry. A logistics company’s CRM would track shippers, lanes and quotes; a title company’s, the agents and lenders behind each order; an IT services firm’s, contracts and renewal dates. Our pages on custom software for logistics companies, title companies and IT services firms say more about each.

An AI step can sit inside the CRM too, such as one that sorts new enquiries by type as they arrive, with a person reviewing what it sorts. The CRM is one of several systems we build; the others, from quoting and scheduling to billing and client portals, are on our custom software development page.

How does a custom CRM connect to your other tools?

Through each tool’s API, so data moves without anyone retyping it. RaftLabs’ cost guide lists email sync with Gmail and Outlook, calendars, phone systems, billing and marketing tools among the integrations a CRM build plans for. In a CRM we would build, an email to a customer lands on that customer’s record, a quote form on your website opens a new lead with the page it came from, a paid invoice shows on the account, and an order in your operations system links back to the contact who placed it.

Each connection is a small build of its own, and it needs attention when the tool on the other end changes its API. Where a tool’s API is thin, a scheduled export can stand in, or an automation tool can carry the data across; that’s the work on our Zapier, Make and n8n page. Connections written in code are API integration services. When a change in the CRM should start work somewhere else, such as a job opened when a deal is won, that’s business process automation. Reports that combine the CRM with your other systems are dashboards and reporting work.

What happens to the records in your current CRM or spreadsheets?

They move into the new CRM before launch, so the team opens it to the customers they already know. Four parts of the move need planning:

• Matching rules: the same customer often sits in two places, under a nickname, an old email or a second contact, and agreed rules decide which records merge.
• Phases: RaftLabs advises exporting in phases: contacts and companies first, then deals with their stage history, then the activity records.
• A parallel run: RaftLabs also plans a period where the old system and the new one run side by side while the team switches over.
• A check by the people who know the records: counts compared before and after, and a sample read by the people who work those accounts.

Old notes, attachments and email history come across where the old tool lets them out. If you aren’t sure what your current CRM can export, ask its vendor early: the answer decides how much history you keep.

How much does it cost to build a CRM?

The market’s ranges on this page are wide because CRMs differ so much in what they carry. At the first level, the CRM guides price contacts, lead capture, a pipeline, tasks and basic reports, with one or two integrations. The second level adds workflow automation, dashboards, roles and permissions, three to five integrations and the move from the old system. The third adds routing and approvals across teams, territories, a link to the ERP, single sign-on and audit logs. RaftLabs, for one, counts moving the old records as part of its fuller first version, while integrations past the third and an automation layer add to its cost.

Our page on custom software cost covers custom builds in general at each level, and what a system costs to keep running. A figure for your CRM comes in the proposal after the call, which prices both the build and the monthly plan.

What does a custom CRM need after launch?

Steady upkeep. The sales process changes, a tool the CRM talks to updates its API, a new hire needs a role and a view. The guides price that work as a share of the build each year. CRM guides such as Space-O’s, CISIN’s, Techugo’s and Dotsquares’ put it at 15 to 20%, for fixes, security updates and small changes. BD Emerson’s custom software guide gives 15 to 25%, and counts upgrades to the libraries the code depends on and infrastructure in that share. BD Emerson puts cloud hosting on a line of its own, as Keyhole Software and Space-O do, while RaftLabs’ CRM guide counts hosting, email sending and maintenance together as one monthly running cost.

Once a CRM we build is live, we look after it on our monthly plan, whose scope your proposal sets out.

If you’re weighing a custom CRM against the one you have, book a 15-minute call. Describe how your team sells today, and we’ll tell you whether building one is worth it.