When an SME needs its own CRM
Most companies that ask us about a CRM already have one. What they don’t have is one that reflects how they work. They’ve paid for licences on a large tool, filled in three of the forty fields it comes with, and the team still keeps the important stuff in a separate spreadsheet. That’s not a lack of discipline: it’s that the real process doesn’t fit the mould.
A bespoke CRM makes sense when the sales process is not standard. Multiple offices that share a portfolio but not commissions. Roles that see different things about the same client. A sales cycle with steps that no template covers. When the business fits the standard, the standard works out cheaper, and we say so.
What we have built
A multi-role CRM for a service company with three offices in Bilbao. Three levels — Super Admin, Office Admin, and Agent — with data synchronised across roles and an executive view on top. Each office manages its own portfolio; management sees the full picture without asking anyone for a report. We do not publish the client’s name.
The problem it solved wasn’t storing contacts: any tool does that. It was having three offices with different incentives share information without stepping on each other’s toes, and letting management view the total without putting together an Excel every Monday.
What it’s built on
We don’t start from scratch. The foundation is Twenty, hosted on your own server — an open-source CRM with an AGPL licence. On top of that goes what’s specific to each business: the roles, the permissions, the fields that are actually used, and the connections with what you already have.
Having it on your own server matters for two reasons. The first is cost: you do not pay per user per month for the next ten years, and the cost does not grow every time you take someone on. The second is the database: it is yours. You can query it, export it and connect it to anything else without asking permission or paying for an API.
The third reason is not technical and tends to carry more weight: the day you want to change provider, you take the system with you. A rented CRM holds your data hostage to renewal.
What’s usually needed around it
- Connect it to invoicing. A CRM that doesn’t know what has been invoiced forces you to look in two places and rely on memory. We connect it to the ERP: that’s what we do with Dolibarr.
- Opportunity scoring. Ordering the pipeline by real probability rather than the salesperson’s gut feeling. This is especially useful when there are more open opportunities than hours to handle them.
- Automatic contact entry. A form, a call, or a WhatsApp becomes a record without anyone typing a thing. What’s entered by hand gets entered late — or not at all.
- Reports that send themselves. The report you have to ask for ends up never being asked for.
How it works
The same four phases as in any of our projects.
Diagnosis. The business, tools and data are audited before anything is proposed. This is usually where it emerges that half the company is already working in a shared spreadsheet nobody had mentioned.
Design. Screens and architecture. Nothing is developed without your sign-off.
Build. AI-assisted, with weekly iterations and a real demonstration. You see it working, not on slides.
Launch. Set-up, team training and support. Training is not an extra: a CRM nobody knows how to use is an empty, expensive database.
When not to commission a bespoke CRM
When the process is still unclear. A CRM freezes the way you work. If that way is half-decided, what gets frozen is the indecision — errors and all.
When your team is small and the cycle is short. With a small team and sales that close in two conversations, a catalogue tool usually does the job. We’d rather tell you upfront than charge you to find out.
When no one will maintain it. A bespoke system needs someone in-house to use and look after it. If there isn’t, it gets abandoned just as the previous one was.
Questions we get asked
How much does a bespoke CRM cost? There is no published price, which is why it is not in the catalogue. It depends on how many roles, how many integrations, and how much data needs to be migrated. What is fixed is the process: first comes the audit, and the budget comes from what has been measured, not from a rough estimate.
How long does it take? The first usable version is usually ready in weeks, not months, because you are not starting from scratch. What drags a project out is almost never the development: it is dirty data migration and pending decisions.
Can data be migrated from the current CRM? Almost always. What needs deciding first is what is worth migrating. Dragging ten years of duplicate records into the new system means paying to move rubbish.
What if we grow? As you don’t pay per user, growth doesn’t multiply the bill. What’s worth reviewing is the server when the volume really increases.
How it starts
With an audit, not a proposal. First we look at what is already set up, what data exists and where time is being lost. What is measured gets written down. From there we decide whether something bespoke is needed or whether what you already have, properly connected, is enough. Both answers are answers.
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