Short of developing custom software, your organization can benefit from off-the-shelf customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Read more about the difference between custom and off-the-shelf software.

There are a number of criteria that you can use when selecting between custom and off-the-shelf CRMs. This post attempts to shed light on buyer dilemmas by asking leading questions.

Are walkthroughs and user manuals available?

When employees need to work with software that has complex functionalities, they will eventually need to refer to a manual.

However, manuals are disruptive -- they take away a software user from the task at hand and force them how to learn to grapple with how software should be used.

A reliable software vendor provides live demos and product training so that user manuals are relegated as occasional references; rather than being must-reads before the software can be used.

Will the vendor provide continuous support?

From implementation to updates and troubleshooting, a CRM vendor should be ready to respond. Delays in technical can disrupt the business flow.

It is worth examining if:

• A vendor can help in implementing, upgrading, maintaining, and scaling the software.
• A vendor has a reputation for providing immediate support.

Can the software be customized to your specific needs?

A CRM should be customizable enough to fully complement the following aspects of your business:

Marketing strategy Sales process Contact management workflow Customer service strategies

For example, each CRM comes with a default workflow for contact management. Are you able to customize that workflow to reflect your actual business workflow?

The software should adjust to the business process, not the other way around.

Can the CRM be further tweaked to enhance user experience?

Your employees, the primary users of a CRM, will be able to acquire a better sense of your chosen CRM. Feedback should be welcomed because software changes can help employees perform better.

What part slows you down?

What tasks are most difficult to accomplish?

Can it be easier to find the tools that you often use?

Does the CRM enable your business to comply with data protection and privacy laws? There are a number of ways that a CRM can be used and configured to comply with privacy laws.

Does the CRM give you the ability to choose which data to store? If your country or state law allows you to store only a customer's name and email address to carry out a business process, you should have the ability to set up a CRM to do so.

How much IT resources do you have?

This question becomes relevant when trying to choose between on-premise and cloud CRM.

An on-premise CRM is housed on your company's own server. It is usually built with open-source code. This gives you more flexibility in terms of customizing the CRM. It also tends to be cheaper than cloud CRM. Moreover, desktop a CRM can be updated offline. The downside is that you will need an in-house IT team to set up, maintain, update, and customize an on-premise.

On the other hand, cloud CRM is hosted on the server of the vendor. This CRM is accessed through a web browser. The main benefit of this type of hosting is scalability -- you can upgrade or downgrade your subscription to accommodate your need for data storage.

The vendor provides all the maintenance and upgrades so that you can use it without an in-house IT team. The main downside to a cloud-based CRM is cost. Security concerns are still valid. Although, one can argue that cloud services are more secure now than they used to be.

Are you looking to integrate third-party apps with your CRM?

There are several tools that you can connect to a CRM. These are some examples:

Sales and marketing automation Contact management Case management Social media marketing Calendar sync Prospecting Team communication

The list can go on. A CRM can be a Swiss Army knife for your business. Getting to that point depends on:

• The compatibility of a CRM for integrations. Open-source CRMs offer more flexibility for integration compared to proprietary CRMs. However, integration with open-source CRMs requires more development work.
• IT resources. The question of integration loops back to IT resources. Proprietary CRMs have customer support that can help with certain integrations. More obscure integrations may require you to tap on your own IT resources. Open-source CRMs don't have this kind of support so you will need to rely on your team or an outsourced software development partner.

Does a CRM have a wide user base?

Unlike vendor CRMs, open-source CRMs don't have customer support. Updates, bug fixes, and security patches depend on the community of developers who support a CRM. Furthermore, a wider user base means more forums and communities that can help resolve problems that you may come across.

A wide user base is also beneficial even if you choose a proprietary CRM. Online communities and forums are a great go-to for common CRM issues. That's the difference between being able to Google a solution versus waiting on the phone for customer support.

How scalable is the CRM?

Business needs change with new technologies, changing customer trends, and more employees. This underscores the need for scalability. These questions address critical issues about scalability:

How many employees will use the CRM? How many will use it in a year?

Can the app be scaled to support more users?

Will it be easy to add new features to meet growing needs?

How will the CRM vendor respond to new security threats?

Will it be easy to integrate to other applications?

What reports can you generate from a CRM?

Customer insight is one of the most valuable things a CRM can offer.

These reporting tools are essential to making informed business decisions:

Sales reports:

Revenue

Pipeline

Goals

Marketing:

Email campaign

Ad campaigns

Website performance

Leads

Goals 

SEO data

Social media data

Customer reporting:

Buying behavior

Demographics

Attrition

Acquisition

If needed by your workflow, can the CRM generate customized reports?

Does the CRM deliver the impact it is designed to do?

Impact can only be measured after a CRM is implemented for some time. But there are signs that a CRM will make a positive impact on customers.

How easy is it to access customer profiles and previous interactions? These data will allow employees to better address a new customer issue or request.

Can you access a customer's previous buying pattern? This avoids situations where a customer is offered a product or service they have previously declined. It makes customers feel that there is continuity in their dealing with a business -- not having to answer the same questions each time.