Unlike off-the-shelf CRMs designed to serve a broad range of companies, custom CRM software is built to fit the requirements and address the pain points of a particular enterprise.
Developing a robust custom CRM system is a highly demanding task that entails multiple challenges. The inability to cope with these challenges can result in budget overruns, decreased software efficiency, and other issues negatively affecting overall CRM project success.
This article covers four key challenges of custom CRM development and provides recommendations for mitigating them.
Challenge 1: Defining the functional scope of CRM software
CRM systems are generally similar in their core functionality, which typically covers contact, lead, and sales management. Beyond that, CRM can provide many other features, from marketing automation to analytics. While a feature-rich solution can be more beneficial for a company, decision-makers should still carefully decide which functionalities to include in their CRM.
Building a comprehensive CRM solution that is equipped with rich functionality requires vast financial investments. What is more, excessive functionalities can complicate the solution and evoke usability issues. Therefore, decision-makers should strike a balance between their business and tech requirements, which can be challenging.
Solution:
A thorough assessment and prioritization of possible software functionalities are essential for determining the suitable CRM feature set. Product managers can help decision-makers define the functional scope more accurately by using the following feature-scoring techniques:
This simple methodology involves evaluating each individual feature in the backlog regarding its potential value to businesses and the effort required to build it. By running such an assessment, IT teams can determine which features are most feasible, prioritizing them.
RICE is a more complex methodology that aims to assess each feature from four perspectives: reach, impact, confidentiality, and effort. Reach refers to the number of users that can be affected by the feature. Impact assesses the feature’s potential effect (such as an increase in lead conversions). Confidence helps ensure that the assessments are based on quality data and therefore trustworthy. Effort, in turn, measures time and financial investment required to implement the functionality.
The MoSCoW methodology involves dividing all functions into four categories: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have. Must-have includes features that are mandatory by default. Should-have represents important functions. Could-have is related to features that could make the CRM more valuable for business users but are not essential. Won't-have includes all functionalities that definitely should not be developed .
Challenge 2: Establishing a strong CRM development team
Developing a complex system such as CRM from scratch is risky and can quickly go wrong or even fail if done by teams without proper expertise. Therefore, building a robust CRM development team is an important yet challenging task.
The shortage of software developers, including those proficient in CRM technology, is one of the complicating factors. The 2024 Technical Skills Report by Pluralsight reveals that 40% of organizations are experiencing an acute shortage of software development skills, and this trend continues to grow. According to the same source, a lack of clear understanding of the required skills for the development project is another critical issue that jeopardizes the success of the CRM project.
Solution:
Getting acknowledged with typical roles included in CRM projects can be the first step for decision-makers to build a multifaceted and efficient CRM development team. Besides positions that are typically involved in software development projects (project managers, developers, testers, etc.), a CRM development team should also include such specific roles as CRM architects and subject matter experts (SMEs).
CRM architects design robust CRM software architectures and data models. In turn, SMEs, which may include marketing, sales, customer service, or other customer relationship management experts, guide architects and developers with their domain knowledge. One of the key responsibilities of an SME is to communicate its department’s business needs to the CRM development team. SMEs also contribute to CRM development in many other ways. For instance, they can review project deliverables to ensure they meet stakeholders' expectations or participate in creating training content for the end-users.
The next step is for decision-makers to evaluate their in-house IT resources to ensure their current team has the required skill set. Otherwise, the company will have to hire or train the talent needed and this process can take months to years, which can cause significant delays in CRM project launch.
To solve this challenge and minimize effort on staff hiring and training, companies can turn to third-party CRM developers. Depending on their business requirements, companies can choose the following engagement models:
A company can quickly fill in skill gaps in its in-house IT team by outsourcing expert developers.
A company can delegate its CRM project implementation to an outsourced development agency.
- Dedicated development center
An outsourced agency can form a dedicated development team fully focused on a particular CRM project.
Challenge 3: Maintaining CRM software security
Every CRM system collects and aggregates customer information, including contact data, purchase history, and personal preferences. However, this abundance of information makes CRM a desirable target for hackers who can try to steal data for espionage or sale. Security vulnerabilities in custom CRM software (bugs, security misconfigurations, lack of data encryption, compromised third-party libraries, etc.) can serve as entry points for hackers and, therefore, must be mitigated.
Solution:
These secure development practices can minimize vulnerabilities and ensure the security of the future CRM solution:
By applying threat modeling methodologies, developer teams can identify potential vulnerabilities in their software already at the architecture design stage. For example, a CRM architect can use the free OWASP Threat Dragon tool to visualize CRM software architecture in diagrams, automatically detect and rank possible security threats, and determine countermeasures for eliminating them.
By integrating data validation mechanisms into a CRM solution, developers can ensure that all data that enters the system meets the CRM owner's security requirements. If a system detects some malicious code or character in the data, it can signal security specialists to run a safety check.
To maintain software safety, CRM teams should regularly roll out security updates even after the solution is launched. Companies can streamline this task by implementing automated patching tools to deploy updates on a predefined schedule. These tools can also test security patches automatically to prevent new vulnerabilities arising within the system.
Challenge 4: Integrating CRM with other systems
Custom CRM cannot operate properly if it is not integrated into a company’s digital ecosystem and thus cannot provide any business value to an organization.
Custom API development is one of the common methods for developers to connect different applications, websites, and even legacy systems with CRM. However, API development can be a challenge, especially if developers have to connect the CRM system with hundreds of separate apps, ensuring all APIs are working correctly and securely.
Solution:
A company can overcome the API integration challenge using iPaaS from AWS, SAP (News - Alert), or any other vendor. A robust iPaaS platform can also provide developers with real-time dashboards helping monitor and analyze API performance and timely identify any integration issues.
Final thoughts
As custom CRM is built around the requirements of one enterprise and aims to solve its specific pain points, it can be more advantageous than off-the-shelf CRM implementation for companies with established workflows and non-trivial business processes.
However, custom CRM development requires building software from scratch, which can pose significant business challenges. These include issues with talent allocation, functional scope definition, software integration, and cybersecurity.
Fortunately, companies can mitigate these challenges and ensure smooth development by creating comprehensive and precise functional requirements documents, implementing secure development practices, using iPaaS, and resorting to third-party CRM developers.
Author:
Roman Davydov is a Technology Observer at Itransition.
