CRM Software: Buying Guide for Beginners

FindMyCRM
4 min readMar 19, 2023

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How to buy the best system from the wide range of options that will work to achieve your business goals? Let’s figure it out!

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What should you consider when choosing?

Top managers and company leaders focus on a variety of factors during the selection process, highlighting those that are most crucial for the business. Specifically:

  • What type of CRM is required for the company’s work;
  • The ability to combine the work of the 1C CRM accounting system;
  • The ability to change the modules to fit the needs of the business to streamline processes;
  • Peculiarities of the organization of work processes and the possibility of organizing remote work of the staff;
  • The total price of implementation and maintenance.

FindMyCRM service can help you define all these aspects and choose the CRM system that best suits your business.

Buying Guide

Types of CRM software

You can choose between two types of CRM depending on the company’s needs for solving business tasks:

  1. Operational: With a minimal budget, it can help you automate basic operations, record relationships with customers, and maintain a single database of contacts. You cannot automate all business processes, perform analytical work, or forecast sales;
  2. Analytical: Offers more opportunities for analytical work. You can manage a segmented client base, data analysis, business process automation, marketing research, sales performance forecasting, etc.

The ability to cooperate with the accounting system

It is possible to streamline the enterprise’s processes by exchanging data with established production systems. For instance, information about invoices is imported into the accounting system, and from there already, data about payment and shipment of products, and so on.

The ability to modify or create modules

Modern CRM systems ought to be flexible. It can be necessary to change the settings to meet the current needs of the business because of its development or a change in the characteristics of work. As a result, open CRM solutions are more popular.

The possibility of organizing remote work for workers

In some businesses, a part of the staff works remotely. Therefore, in such cases, the ability to organize remote work will be a crucial factor. After a short period of setup, the employee can work remotely.

The price of implementation and maintenance

You should consider that price will be associated with the purchase of a license, implementation, and support services. It`s impossible to get CRM for free. However, you can try demo periods, during which you can install and test the chosen CRM software for free, allowing you to compare the capabilities of several systems.

Buying Guide

Buying Guide

This process includes the following steps:

  • Consult with key users and stakeholders: Find out what each team needs from your CRM and how they interact with contacts, objects, and other data. Additionally, this is an excellent opportunity to evaluate the problems your teams are now experiencing with their existing systems and decide which improvements would be most helpful to each team or department.
  • Define your goals: Identifying the goals the business wants to achieve with CRM is one of the most important steps. CRM software can help you increase the level of control over the work of employees, organize the database, reduce the risk of losing new customers, get detailed insights, and focus on important meetings and projects.
  • Analyze your tech stack: When you browse potential CRMs, consider options that will effectively integrate with the tools you already use. This is also a great chance to determine whether a new CRM system can really help you reduce the size of your tech stack. Each CRM probably offers features that would let you do away with an existing tool, further streamlining your processes and providing cost savings.
  • Compare key features and capabilities: Despite their apparent variety, all modern CRM solutions have a common basis, without which the software would be useless. However, two key requirements for effective CRM solutions are comprehensiveness and interconnectedness.
  • Consider ROI and costs: You should analyze more than just the suggested retail price of each potential option. Consider the long-term benefits, for example, of addressing the most annoying concerns of your staff or scaling up CRM with your business growth.
  • Describe your adoption plan: As you come closer to making your final purchasing decision, you’ll need to develop an internal plan to direct the installation, launch, and adoption of your new CRM. To get started, you should identify resources to support implementation, create a realistic timeline, and develop an adoption strategy.

To sum up

So, after carefully analyzing the company`s needs and following our guide, you can choose the right software. But you can also use our selection tool if you can’t decide on a choice. Visit our website to learn more!

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FindMyCRM
FindMyCRM

Written by FindMyCRM

Looking for a CRM? We do the research and test-drive the software for you. Limit your risk, leverage expert advice, and find the right CRM solution for you.