The demands of your asset management firm require quick, decisive, and accurate decision making. You don’t have time to get caught up in the nuances and complexities of key technologies in your workflow. A buy-side CRM works efficiently and intuitively, offering robust, adaptable features to help you service clients and grow your business. To streamline the CRM decision making process, we have broken down key considerations, analyzing two options that may ultimately be the right solution for your firm.
When selecting an industry specific CRM, it is important to understand the differences between a custom CRM built from the ground up and a configurable CRM offering buy-side specific workflows and an expedited ROI.
Customizable vs. Configurable Buy-Side CRMs
While these two options share the same end goal of providing a solution that streamlines the daily functions of your firm, they have distinct differences.
Customizable CRM
An in-house customized CRM may seem an obvious choice for some. After all, who knows your business needs better than yourself?
While a customizable CRM may prove to be ideal for a buy-side firm in theory, in practice it is quite complicated and its promised potential is rarely fully realized. Everyone has an opinion on which features are needed and how they should interact with the solution. This leads to overly complicated workflows, expensive last-minute changes, and inevitable delays in delivery. In the end, too much design freedom and design-by-committee can lead to the duck-billed-platypus syndrome.
Even if you get beyond the cost and workload of building a CRM solution from the ground up, you are still not done. The main drawbacks arise once the CRM is put into use.
With business growth, development and regulatory updates, your CRM needs to pivot with those changes. Customized CRMs can be extremely difficult to maintain and upgrade, often requiring more time and effort than it saves.
The constant changes and additions needed to keep your buy-side CRM running optimally can also cause your solution to become clunky and less-user friendly. Employees already familiar with the CRM will need to constantly be taught new functions, while new employees will find it challenging to learn all the quirks of a custom software. In addition, the more you customize a CRM the higher the risk that those customizations will break during a platform upgrade. As a result, you will need to allocate time regularly to test and manage upgrades. It is not uncommon to hear of firms being on outdated versions of software simply due to upgrades breaking customized features which would be too expensive or difficult to rebuild.
In addition, the more you customize a CRM the higher the risk that those customizations will break during a platform upgrade. As a result, you will need to allocate time regularly to test and manage upgrades. It is not uncommon to hear of firms being on outdated versions of software simply due to upgrades breaking customized features which would be too expensive or difficult to rebuild.
A custom CRM is a perfect solution for your business in a singular moment in time. Businesses however grow and adapt, as do their markets, quickly turning a customized buy-side CRM into a burden rather than a solution.
Configurable CRM
While initially maybe not as eye-catching as a customized product, a highly configurable CRM provides the reliability and adaptability of a product built by software experts, with the option to tailor features around your firm’s needs.
With greater ease in implementation, an already built, configurable CRM will allow your CRM project to hit the ground running. When built for buy-side firms, a configurable CRM allows for smooth updates with minimal input and no risk. Modifications are made using the CRM’s built -in tools.
Ease of adaptability and change within a configurable CRM is analogous to your cell phone’s app store. No app will have every single need and function you want for your cell phone, however the app store provides you with a variety of easy-to-implement apps that meet your needs. A configurable CRM is able to meet individual needs of firms across a market by providing numerous solutions to the main issues affecting your industry.
Conclusion
A buy-side CRM will be a central hub for managing your client relationships. As a result, choosing a CRM should not be a decision taken lightly.
A custom CRM may indeed work best for your firm, however it is important to be aware of and plan for the cost and difficulty in building and maintaining a custom-built software to match your firm’s growth and trajectory.
At Satuit Technologies it is our belief that you have more important duties than maintaining and updating a software. Our CRM solution is built specifically for buy-side professionals. We know the changes that come with the asset management industry and have created a solution that not only solves your immediate needs, but grows and adapts with your firm.
Get a demo of our buy-side CRM today, to see whether SatuitCRM is right for your firm.
