In this article, I will tell you how to prepare a budget for the purchase and implementation of CRM to be ready for the investment and avoid unpleasant surprises in the form of additional costs during implementation.
CRM Budgeting
Similarly to general budgeting, the preparation of the purchase ireland business email list budget and CRM implementation can be divided into the following phases: budget planning, creation and control of its execution. The preparation of the budget is to help achieve the company's goals.
Preparing a budget for the purchase and implementation of CRM depends on:
company size,
type of CRM.
Nevertheless, there are principles and best practices that are worth following in every case. It is also worth mentioning right away that the cost of purchasing a CRM consists of both the cost of purchasing a license and the cost of implementation, including, for example, using the services of external partners, training employees and the time that your employees will have to spend learning new tools.
Get ready. Identify your goals and benefits
Define your needs for your CRM tool, clearly defining what business goals you want to achieve by implementing a new solution. Many of these can be measured, which will then help you answer the question of whether your budget has been spent effectively and what the return on investment is. Think about exactly what problems you want to solve with your CRM system and how much you are willing to invest in solving them.
Define the benefits that are to result from the CRM implementation. What can you get?
Removing obstacles from sales processes, which will translate into reduced marketing and sales costs and increased sales.
Better use of working time. This can translate into reduced costs or increased sales or both.
Increased control over the sales process. This can affect:
cost reduction – e.g. each week salespeople spend 47 minutes preparing analyses and reports or a special person is employed to do this. You can shorten the work or reduce all or part of the full-time job.
increase in sales – thanks to CRM, salespeople can increase sales because they complete their tasks faster, access to data also allows them to learn from mistakes and successes, understand current and expected results faster and more fully and take appropriate actions based on this knowledge.
Better understanding of customer needs. With all the knowledge about customer interactions with your brand gathered in one place, the ability to track their "digital body language" .
Better market understanding. For example, through the ability to track customer responses or segmentation, analysis and forecasting tools.
Better understand your competition with tools to monitor their activities.
To learn more about the benefits of a CRM system, visit our knowledge base .
Determine what wave of organizational change will be necessary to properly utilize the change that the introduction of the new tool will be. Who will be involved in the change process? How long will it take?
Collect offers from the market
Gather some preliminary knowledge about CRM systems . Build up a preliminary idea of what functionalities modern CRM tools have. This will allow you to better define your own needs regarding this software.
Determine what functionality of available CRMs you will need. A good definition of the required scope of functionality allows you to pre-select a group of available tools that may meet your expectations. It also allows you to avoid the costly mistake of choosing an ill-fitting solution or paying for functions that you do not need.
Determining the functionality and available solutions will allow you to identify suppliers of the selected group of CRM tools.
Once you have a list of potential solutions and their vendors, be sure to check what scope of implementation and training work the vendors you’re considering offer. These are significant budget items, as is the scope of integration and data customization work that may need to be performed.
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Indicate the main budget items
Check out the price lists of selected solutions. Most CRM systems are currently offered in a subscription system with a SaaS model. This means that you do not have to bear the costs of equipment, e.g. running a server room, because your information is stored in the cloud model (some providers store data on servers located in the EU). At the same time, you need to calculate the monthly costs well. Note that the price of the system depends on the subscription level, the number of users using it and/or the number of records stored. Therefore:
Determine how many people will work in the system. Many of the available solutions sell CRM licenses with pricing based on the number of users.
Determine what different job positions should be possible to define in the system. If you have already done that, then determine the number of users of each job type.
Reliable suppliers usually make their price list available online, but fully understanding the price list may require the help of an advisor who will indicate which solution is optimal for you and calculate the costs.
Determine whether the CRM will need to be integrated with other IT systems in your company (financial system, ERP system, Outlook, Gmail, etc.). If the system needs to connect to other systems, check if any of the solutions on your list of potential CRMs already have built connections to the programs you use in your company. If they are not available, then any integration of the CRM with another IT system will be a significant item in the planned budget.
Such integrations are usually priced separately by the company that would perform them. Integration work may constitute a separate subproject, and you may need to include a specialist from your organization or hire an external specialist. Also, determine in what order the company's systems are to be integrated with CRM.
Another item that may affect your budget is the data you already have in your company, or more precisely, the cost of cleaning, integrating and loading it into the new system.
Will you be feeding the new system with data you already have within your organization?
Does data require fusion from different sources?
Does the data require standardization and cleansing?
Ask yourself whether you have the skills in your organization to carry out the CRM selection and implementation project . If you do not, you can either rely more on the company providing CRM, or hire the right person or company as a consultant or project manager. If you rely on the supplier, you will bear the cost of the project in the implementation costs, if you hire an external consultant, include the implementation service in the budget, e.g. as a separate subproject, and if someone from your team does it, you will bear the cost of the work time.
