Best CRM Software in 2021

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software provides a 360-degree view of the information related to customers and prospects. It helps in cultivating relationships with the customers and improving the operational efficiency of a business organization.

CRM is consistently augmenting the software market. The driving force behind the growth in CRM solutions is businesses' requirement to manage their data perfectly, provide excellent customer service, and acquire real-time information that can help them make smart decisions and achieve sales goals.

Furthermore, in this competitive business scenario, delivering an exceptional customer experience has become mandatory if you want your organization to sustain and expand. Whether you are planning to invest in your first CRM system or changing your existing one, choosing a CRM is a challenging process. Fortunately, this buyers' guide provides you complete information about CRM, as below, that can help you in selecting the right CRM and achieving your business goals.

CRM is a combination of practices or a strategy followed by businesses to build better customer relationships, improve revenue, and provide a flawless customer experience. CRM enables you to prioritize your customers and helps your organization follow a customer-centric approach, resulting in increased customer loyalty, exponential growth in sales, and ROI.

To acquire and retain customers, it is important to build and nurture relationships with them. It is quite crucial to building healthy customer relationships to keep them happy. One unhappy customer can result in several unhappy customers, especially in this era of social media, where everything gets viral so quickly. According to Deloitte's research report, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than the companies not focusing on the customers.

Besides following the right philosophy for providing exceptional customer service, you need to use the right tools and technology too. A streamlined CRM system deployed in an organization helps the employees who are directly dealing with the customers. It helps sales, marketing, and customer support teams take action in terms of selling, communicating, improving the quality of the products/services, coordinating, and everything else, which can benefit both the customers and the business.

CRM System or Customer Relationship Management system is a tool that helps in improvising contact management, client communication, orders management, operations, and productivity. CRM systems and practices help you promptly access all the information with a single click or a tap, whether it is about the last conversation with a client or understanding the likes and dislikes of a potential buyer.

Earlier, CRM software was used to store customer data and information, but now, it has changed over the years. Now, CRM software can accomplish many tasks like -

Contact Management: The entire information about the customers, like their contact details, purchase history, payments, preferences, demographics, etc., are stored in one place. It becomes easy to access the required information whenever required.

Lead Nurturing: Keeping track of leads and assigning them to the specific sales team/executive is very important to ensure efficient management and high conversions. 

Tasks Management: CRM adds tasks and deals automatically with customer information. It helps in assigning and monitoring tasks in your sales pipeline. Moreover, data updated in real-time ensures that you are accessing the latest information.

Marketing: CRM software assists in the entire marketing and promotion activities like bulk emailing, customer segmentation, inbound marketing, campaign creation, etc., and enhances their effectiveness, helping to achieve sales goals. 

Salesforce Automation: CRM software can automate the entire sales process, including tracking client interactions, analyzing sales opportunities, sales team performance tracking, forecasting sales, and many more, which can provide clear visibility of market trends, patterns, and behavior.

Workflow Automation: CRM software can be used to automate and streamline various processes in an organization and enhance its efficiency. It saves time, money, paperwork, and also eliminates the repetition of tasks, and improves accuracy at the same time.

Reporting: CRM software can generate different reports that can provide visibility of overall business from different angles. Whether it is about tracking sales performance or marketing expenses, customer relationship management software can provide quick & accurate reports.

Real-time and reliable reporting

CRM provides sorted, structured, well-tabulated, and actionable data metrics and reports that help in real-time decision making related to deals, clients, and potential leads. The visual sales funnels created by CRM applications are trusted resources for sales teams.

Data visualization and organized information

CRM's dashboard gives exceptional visualization of crucial customer data, sales, and lead data on a centralized dashboard. CRM Dashboard can be configured for graphs, tables, charts, etc. Using CRM means keeping all the information about your customers organized to make it more accessible. Every interaction with your customers is identified, documented, and recorded. 

Elevates Personalized Communication and Proactive Service

CRM solutions elevate personalized communications by a series of automated emails at various stages of the customer journey and sales process. Many times your customers may have to communicate with different people in your team. In that case, it can become a hassle for the customer if they need to explain their issues and preferences every time they speak to a new person. The customer relationship management tool can eliminate this problem as it ensures that everyone in the team has the same customer data.

 Automates Repetitive Tasks To Increase Efficiency

There are some tasks like filling out the forms, completing legal formalities, etc., which are monotonous but are vital in a sales process. A CRM helps automate these repetitive tasks and helps your representatives focus on the tasks like closing deals and solving the queries of the customers with tools such as chatbots and automated messaging. 

Increases Collaboration and Efficiency Within Multiple Teams

CRM helps in accessing the calendar, emails, phone call details, etc., keeping the multiple teams updated about the information relating to meetings & conferences. Marketing, sales, and customer service teams can easily share valuable data using CRM and accomplish their common goals.

Encourages Smart Decision Making

Miscalculated data accessed from excel sheets or guesswork can lead to wrong decisions and failures. The best CRM tool can provide accurate data in the form of customized reports providing information about your overall business's current status. Based on that, you can design strategies that really work and grab the opportunities that yield long-term profitability in your business.

In a Nutshell, 

• CRM provides real-time and reliable reporting of customer data and potential leads
• CRM's dashboard gives exceptional data visualization of crucial sales, lead, and customer data
• CRM solutions elevate personalized communication at various stages of the customer journey and sales process.
• CRM automates repetitive tasks with tools such as chatbots and automated messaging to increase efficiency
• CRM tools increase collaboration and efficiency within multiple teams
• The best CRM tool provides accurate data and customized reports that enable smart decisions.
• CRM follows a predictive data-based approach to solve issues proactively

CRM Software for Real Estate: 

CRM system assists real-estate developers in automating the document approval process, automatically assigning clients to employees for follow-ups, conducting customer analytics, segmentation, workflow automation, and lead scoring.  Companies can use top free and open source real estate crm systems for streamlining their daily workflows. Property developers can build strong relationships with customers by implementing CRM.

CRM Software for Healthcare

CRM solutions for Healthcare make healthcare providers capable of unleashing personalized experience to patients. From onboarding employees to provide self-service options to patients, CRM for Healthcare delivers exceptional results and improves operational efficiencies. 

CRM for Software Companies/ CRM for IT industries. 

CRM in the IT industry can work wonders when it comes to aligning marketing and sales teams. IT companies can provide the best CX and customer success programs by deploying CRM for the IT sector. 

CRM Software for Banking/Insurance/Finance

With digital economies coming into play, CRM for Banking, Insurance, and Finance sectors meet unique challenges in delivering consumer satisfaction. It enables Inter-department data tracking, efficient communication, and funnel-based lead conversion.  It helps banks to create valuable customer journeys for their customers. 

CRM Software for Retail

CRM for retail software helps retailers to target strategically important customers. It creates an omnichannel selling experience with its SMS, Watsapp, Live Chat integration. Most CRM for Retail have inbuilt AI that enables retailers to make faster decisions. 

CRM Software for Manufacturing

Customer Relationship Management software for manufacturing gives a 360-degree view of sales pipelines, improved services, analytics tools, intelligent planning, and sales projections. CRM data mapped with AI can help manufacturers make real-time sales decisions. 

CRM Software for Travel & Hospitality

CRM for hospitality and travel provide the tools for tracking customer interactions, send proactive responses, offer special discounts, and craft personalized customer journeys. CRM also helps in multi-channel advertising and managing customer loyalty. 

CRM Software for Media

Media companies can boost revenues across media publications, converge the organization's data, and increase circulation with the help of  CRM solutions. CRM assists in conducting budgeting, loyalty analysis, and customer retention.

CRM Software for Small businesses: 

Small businesses' customer base, focus, and scale are entirely different from large enterprises. Therefore, the complexity and clunkiness of CRM for large businesses don't apply to small ones. CRM for small business is designed to provide mobility,  flexibility, easy adoption capabilities, a single platform interface, and affordable prices. 

CRM Software for Mid-sized businesses

CRM for midsize businesses helps them in customer onboarding, lead generation, and increasing profitability by keeping processes agile. CRM solutions for midsize businesses provide all functionalities required by midsize enterprises with complete security features. 

CRM Software for Large businesses

CRM for large businesses unleash complete workflow automation, exceptional functionalities, and lead capturing essentials. Large enterprises have a huge customer base and they require stringent data security and privacy features. CRM designed for large enterprises provides robust data safety features and modules needed for various CRM related tasks.

CRM Software for Sales Teams

A CRM system helps streamline sales teams' work by automating major aspects of their daily workflow. The process involves analyzing sales opportunities, marketing campaigns, communicating with prospects, designing customized marketing strategies evaluating sales team performance, and forecasting sales.

CRM software for Lead Generation Team

CRM solutions for lead generation help you build a customized lead generation funnel for attracting prospects, nurturing their interest, capturing and converting leads. 

CRM Software for Project Management Team

CRM applications for project management keep projects on track, automate processes, track budgets, and manage employees, resources, and customers under the project. 

Strategic CRM:

Strategic CRM puts the requirements of the customers first. Its job is to collect, segregate, and apply information about the customer and market trends to come up with business strategies benefitting the customers.

Operational CRM:

Operation CRM is focused on recording the interactions with the customers and allowing sales & marketing professionals to access that information and communicate accordingly. It ensures that all the sales opportunities, contacts, and tasks are attended efficiently at the right time.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM is oriented towards analyzing the data required to make informed decisions for future business strategies. For example, an analytical CRM can provide answers to questions referring to the details about the customers positively responding to the previous marketing campaigns. This helps in analyzing the target audience and launching new marketing campaigns accordingly.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM keeps your sales team, marketing team, partners, management, production team, and all the stakeholders on the same page. It allows smooth communication and transactions between the teams involved in a sales and marketing campaign, production, or a task.

On-Premise CRM software:

Many companies prefer on-premise deployment of their CRM tool, as they get full control over it in terms of data and security. 

Cloud-based CRM System

A cloud-based deployment, also known as Software-as-a-service (SaaS) or Cloud CRM, is hosted by the service provider and can be accessed from anywhere as long as there is internet available. Several companies opt for Cloud CRM because of its cheaper setup, low maintenance costs, and quick deployment.

Web-based CRM Software

Web-Based CRM software or online CRM systems can be accessed from anywhere using the internet. These are scalable SaaS-based CRM products. 

Open Source CRM Software:

Most open source CRM software have their source code in the public domain. They can be customized easily to fit your needs. They can be downloaded and deployed for various OS platforms: Windows CRM software, iOS CRM software, and more.

There are several CRM tools available in the market, but not all can suit your business. You have to analyze what CRM software can do for you and your sales teams. Below listed are some factors which you need to consider while selecting the right CRM for your business.

Goals

When it comes to analyzing CRM software requirements, you need to understand the problem you need to resolve using a CRM. You need to prioritize your goals to determine which CRM would suit your business type and size. For example, if tracking customer interactions is of prime importance to you and your CRM doesn't allow that, then investing in it would be of no use. If you are a small business owner, then you can go for CRM software for small businesses. 

Implementation

Implementing a new CRM system can be tedious if it does not match your organization's existing resources. You need to ensure that the new CRM tool you are investing in doesn't require you to provide time-consuming training to your employees or hire new ones to implement it. That would increase your cost and add to your problems instead of solving them.

User Adoption

Regardless of the system you choose, your employees are always resistant to change. This is a common issue faced by most of the organizations that the employees are not ready to get trained or acquainted with the new system. In this case, it is always better to take suggestions from employees before purchasing a CRM tool.

Compatibility to Integrate

Whether it is for social media marketing, email campaigns, or automating any other task, you are already using several tools in your organization. Before buying a CRM tool, you need to check how compatible it is with other tools and how well it can integrate with those systems to make your jobs seamless.

CRM Software Demo

It is always better to purchase a CRM system after using it for a certain time. Ask for a Demo of services for various CRM software packages offered by the vendor. Once you have seen a demo for different pricing plans, you can decide on which one from the available  CRM software options will suit your needs. You can ask your employees to take a product demo of CRM software or try using it within a trial period to get an idea of whether it would work for your business or not.

Customized Reports

The Customer Relationship Management software you pick should allow you to generate customized reports as per your business operations and logic. The reports would help you in making informed decisions and set you apart from your competitors; thus, it becomes necessary to consider this aspect without fail before investing in a CRM.

Contact Management

All the CRM solutions facilitate the users to feed the names, contact information, social media accounts of the customers, suppliers, prospects, etc. But, the important features you need to consider are - the fields should be logically organized. The interface should be appealing and user-friendly, and you should be able to access that information quickly.

Interaction Tracking

It is an important feature when different team members are working with the same contacts. If you don't know what your colleague last spoke to one of your customers, you cannot move on with the conversation with him/her. Customer Relationship Management software should allow you to view the history of interactions done with the customers to communicate accurately and effectively.

Lead Management

The process of converting leads to users in a smooth manner is important for any type or size of business. Proper lead management can do that. The key to the best selection here is to ensure that the CRM follows the process that can work as per your business logic. Your sales team can test CRM software to determine this aspect.

Integrations

Every business is distinctive, and so is yours. You need to ensure that the CRM you are planning to invest in allows integrating the applications and software you frequently use, like email marketing software, marketing automation software, social media marketing software, etc. If it has the in-built capability to manage the tasks you are getting done by using different tools, that can be a better choice for you.

Document Management

Collecting, storing, and sharing documents from a centralized hub directly benefits your team members and indirectly to your customers. Keeping the entire sales team on the same page helps in providing an excellent customer experience. A centralized hub for knowledge obviously is an asset to an organization, and if your CRM includes that, it definitely can be a major reason for your business growth. 

Quotes/Proposals Management

If your business requires creating, printing, and managing quotes and proposals, this feature in your CRM can help you. You can easily create and email the quotes/proposals, check the history of contracts with your customers/suppliers, and manage these documents at a centralized location.

Sales Pipeline Management

Want to check the buyers' journey of a specific contact? A CRM allowing you to manage the sales pipeline can help you in that task. You can check each individual's status and progress at each stage of the sales pipeline and design a customized marketing strategy for your prospects for successful conversions.

Workflow Automation

There are several tasks in an organization that needs to be done repeatedly — for example, sending promotional emails, birthday greetings, etc., to your customers. The CRM allows you to automate the workflow and ensures that your sales team focuses on productive tasks instead of utilizing their time in monotonous tasks.

Reporting/Analytics

With the reporting feature, you can generate customized reports relevant to sales figures, individual salesperson or team, customers based on geographical location, buyers' journey, etc. You just need to ensure that the CRM you select allows you to generate customized reports as per your business requirements.

Proactive Approach

CRM allows you to follow a proactive approach based on the predictive data it provides. It helps you in solving the issues before they even arise. For example, from predictive data, if you find that you are not going to get more projects this year, you can follow a proactive approach by hiring more resources required to complete those projects and save your business from disruptions.

After identifying the major factors to consider while selecting a Customer Relationship Management software, the next thing that comes is to pick the right CRM vendor. Here is the list of major aspects that you need to look into while evaluating a CRM vendor.

Industry Experience

By going through the website and client list of the CRM vendors, you would get an idea of whether they have served with CRM tools to companies similar to yours. An experienced vendor should be able to match your demands.

Configuration & Training

Customer Relationship Management software is of no use to you if it is not configured properly, and your staff has not been provided training on how to use it. So, when you are asking for other details of a Customer Relationship Management software from the vendor, ensure that you ask whether they would be providing configuration services and training to your employees or not.

Flexibility & Scalability

The CRM vendor you select should be able to provide you with scalable and flexible CRM solutions. Today, if you have opted for an on-premise CRM solution, it is not necessary that you will not need a cloud-based CRM in the future. Moreover, your business is going to grow, and so are your requirements. Your CRM vendor should be ready to match up to your software expectations in the future.

Customer Support

Customer support is required, especially when Customer Relationship Management software has been newly deployed in your organization. You need to ensure that the CRM vendor you have chosen has a local partner network and provides prompt customer support.

Check Reviews

Don't purchase Customer Relationship Management software from any vendor at its face value. Try to purchase the top-rated CRM after checking the customer reviews, which will give you an idea about the quality of their CRM tools and services they offer. Get answers to the questions like - are they quick at responding to their customers? Or how is the quality of their CRM product? Because once you buy the Customer Relationship Management software from any vendor, you will not be able to change your decision until the purchase period expires.

Most of the CRM system cost is based on a monthly subscription and the number of users. A CRM tool's cost can be as minimum as $5 per month and can go up to $100 per month, depending on its features. For example, you can use services of the CRM software company, such as  Asort CRM, by paying only $5 per month, whereas CRM software vendors such as LionO360 CRM will cost you around $100 per month depending on the features you require. If you are not comfortable with monthly subscription plans, you can go for solutions like Conduct CRM, which is for $150 per year, or BusinessMan Enterprise, by paying a one-time charge of $11995.

The CRM tools for large enterprises are usually by quote as their requirements are specific, and users can be unlimited. Usually, the more features and the number of users a CRM has, the higher it's pricing.

Some CRM solutions are available free for a specific period, thus providing you the facility of using it before you invest in it. The users and features can be limited in the free trial period, but it gives you an idea about whether that Customer Relationship Management software is compatible with your business or not.

Also, there are some free and open source CRM software available in the market, which you can customize and deploy without making huge investments. These free ones might not be having the dynamic and robust features you are looking for, but you can check them out as some of them, like Hubspot and Zoho CRM, can provide many benefits free of cost.

For any organization implementing a CRM system is a challenging task. Many times, companies invest in Customer Relationship Management software with high-end features and functionality, but lacking user-friendliness prevents users from adopting it. What is the point in investing so much in the software when your people are not using it? So, below are some tips that can help you in the successful implementation of CRM in your organization.

• Encourage top management to involve and motivate their subordinates to use the CRM. 
• Create enthusiasm within the teams to use the software
• Launching the new CRM system by organizing a party or posting motivational information
• Provide detailed usage guidelines of the new CRM system to the users
• Provide sufficient training about using the new CRM tool to your employees
• Be clear with the purpose of introducing a new CRM system in your organization with your employees

Leaving history behind, CRM is evolving and will continue to evolve in the future. So, here are some upcoming trends of CRM which you need to consider -

• The use of AI in CRM would increase at an exponential level.
• IoT would be a major advancement in the CRM market.
• Mobility in CRM is here to stay.
• Social media would continue to play a major role in customer relationship management.
• CRMs would become much more user-friendly.

The competitive landscape of the software world makes it necessary for the buyers to take a deep dive into the core functionalities, modules, and framework of the CRM software solutions before investment. However, unearthing everything on your own requires time, resources, and knowledge of all parameters that should be taken into account before finalizing the vendor. This is exactly where GoodFirms can help CRM software seekers.

Resourceful and inquisitive, the GoodFirms’ software research team analyzes every aspect of the best CRM solutions available in the software world with its unique research strategy. After following the intricate research process, GoodFirms provides the listing of more than 60k software and services with detailed information and 30k+ unbiased reviews. GoodFirms leaves no stone unturned to bring to you the best perspective on CRM software solutions, including detailed descriptions of features, alternatives, comparisons, and pricings. GoodFirms uses a spectrum of methodologies to perform an accurate analysis of various software vendors before finalizing the top software providers in the market.