CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

A practical example

Example: a 15-person B2B team moves from spreadsheets to a CRM so every rep sees the same account history, managers forecast from pipeline stages, and marketing leads flow in with source data attached.

What to evaluate before investing

• Map your actual sales stages and required fields first, then test whether each candidate CRM models them without heavy customization.
• Verify integration paths with the tools you already run, such as email, marketing automation, billing and support, and whether data syncs both ways reliably.
• Evaluate admin effort: who maintains fields, users and automations, and whether non-technical staff can manage routine changes.

Limitations and tradeoffs

A CRM does not fix an undefined sales process; importing a messy spreadsheet into a new platform reproduces the mess, so document your process and data standards before migration.