You Should Buy or Build a CRM?

Vaibhav Srivastava
10 August 2020

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is one of the most powerful tools that an organisation can use. You could be a small, medium-sized enterprise or an even a big corporate house with a workforce in thousands, but a well-built CRM can improve the way your employees do a followup with their clients, boost sales number and enhance customer satisfaction. But, when you think of implementing a CRM system in your organisation, the biggest question that leaves you in dilemma is, whether you should buy or build a CRM?

There are numerous CRM development companies and the market is flooded with many of them. But, the licensing and other maintenance fees has left many organisations in deep thinking if they should buy or build a CRM.

No doubt, it is one of the toughest decisions to make by any organisation. In this series, we will tell how you can make the smart selection. 

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Cost Incurred

You may or may not compromise with anything but when it comes to buy or build a CRM, one thing most of us cannot compromise is the cost incurred in the process. The average initial cost of building a fully-fledged CRM comes close to $30,000-$50,000. This value can change with change in the requirements and scope of the project. Another thing that should be noticed while you think to buy or build a CRM is most companies in this field charge per user. This means, more your team size grows, more you will have to pay from your pocket.

In the tug of war between buy or build a CRM, it is always a good choice to build a CRM as it is a one-time investment to make and you won’t have to pay per user.

Customisation

Have you ever read any report where employees of different companies who are already using CRM have given their feedback? Well, most of them will simply say that their CRM is not personalised enough to meet their requirements. In such cases, in the fight between buy or build a CRM, building a CRM wins and those companies have to switch to build their own CRM. 

There are many organisations that are not as big as Fortune 500 companies have a workforce that is not easy to handle. Even they need a CRM to bring some ease in the process. But, when they try to buy one, it always comes with services that are of no use for their business. In such cases, building a CRM as per your needs is a far better option.

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Ownership of the CRM

While thinking to buy or build a CRM, it is important to know whether you will get its ownership or not? When you consider paying the charges for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, you actually rent it. It’s true that you get all the rights to use the product but you can never own it. The problem here is, what if the service provider plans to discontinue the product or terminate some major features? The answer is, you will have to give up a CRM software in which you have already invested a load of money yet you can’t keep it for your business. Here, between buy or build a CRM, building it is a much better option.

Contrary to this, you get the real ownership when you hire an agency like Quarks to build a bespoke CRM software for you. In the scenario between buy or build a CRM, when you build a CRM, you own the source code in which you can add new functionalities or remove those that are not of much use. 

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Final Verdict

Your company wants to buy or build a CRM is completely your decision to take. But, it is always better to build a CRM of your own as you won’t have to pay the charges for users, you can customise it as per the requirements of your business which ultimately reduce unnecessary financial expenses. Apart from this, you will always be the owner, which is definitely not a case when you buy it. So, when it comes to buy or build a CRM, building it is always a better choice to make.

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