Long-term readers might be familiar with how I describe different types of CRM: sales, marketing, service, and eCommerce. But what if you need more than one of these? If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by juggling multiple systems that don’t talk to each other, you’re not alone. You are jumping into one of the oldest questions in technology—should I buy an integrated “all-in-one” system? Or should I knit together specialised systems in a way that works for my business? And I should add that not only is this an old question, but a complicated one! Today, I’m going to help you navigate this question.

What is the real difference between these integrated vs specialised systems?

At the heart of the question is a choice between having:

  • Multiple systems that do one job well
  • Consolidated systems that cover everything

I’ll give you an example:

You work in a small consultancy. You do most of your marketing via email and social media. When people are interested in working with you, it becomes a one-on-one sales conversation in which you provide customised proposals.

You might decide you don’t want to spend too much on systems and technology and want a few simple systems that are not too expensive. You might choose Mailer Lite , a cost-effective email marketing tool, for your email marketing and run your proposals manually – a list on a spreadsheet and using your email and to-do systems, plus shared files to track where customers are up to in your sales and delivery processes.

But as your team grows, you start to get frustrated with moving customer information from one list to another, not to mention your customers getting frustrated when they talk to different team members who may not know the status of the sales conversation or the work. You might invest in a CRM like Active Campaign that has both marketing and sales capability to keep track of marketing communications, customer conversations, and deal progress in one place, and keep your delivery process manual.

The alternative to investing in the integrated CRM is automating some information sharing. In the case above, if your delivery process is complex, you might have already invested in a project management platform like monday .com to manage your proposals and projects. You can build an automated link to share key pieces of customer information. For example, when you win some work, you will update monday .com with customer and project details, but you might also want to tag that person as a customer in MailerLite now, not just a lead, to create better targeted emails.

The question becomes even more complicated in the case above because monday.com is being used as an operational project management system. Your operational systems might also have enough CRM capabilities for what you need, so you don’t need to invest in a specialised CRM.

How to choose? The factors that matter most.

Like all choices for your business, you need to consider the trade-off between costs and the value these capabilities will bring. The tricky thing with this decision is unpacking what cost and value.

The first rule of thumb is: all other things being equal, one system is better than many. This is because knitting together information across multiple systems always has some amount of cost and risk associated with it. These days, many more tools will help you make these links more easily than ever before. You don’t need a team of expensive IT people like you used to. But there is still complexity and cost to set up and maintain the links, so you need to factor that in. And, of course, you always have the challenge of keeping information in multiple places – more systems your team needs to learn how to use and the possibility inconsistent information about your customers might sneak in. The other side of that risk is that you become tied up with one software vendor. Do you trust them? What happens if they start increasing their price a lot?

Costs to consider:

  • Software cost: Often, the costs of integrated systems are higher, and you have to pay for multiple modules of that integrated system. Try to compare them to all the things you might be able to replace, though – there may be more jobs that your integrated system can do than you think that can replace many more things you are currently paying for.
  • Technical implementation costs: This is where it can get murky. Building an integrated system can be a significant up-front cost, and you will need to have someone do the ongoing maintenance, too. But the implementation costs of linking together multiple systems can sneak up on you over time—building links and automation and investing in tools like Zapier that help you do this.
  • Business costs: These can include adjusting processes, training your team, moving your information into new systems, and building the capability to use your systems to their best advantage. It is not just the time involved but also the impact on motivation and engagement. For many of my clients, the impact of change on their team was the most important consideration.

Value to consider:

  • Business capabilities: What can the integrated system vs the separate systems do for you? Will they allow for seamless automation across a range of processes? Will they help you to grow revenue by facilitating better and more timely customer conversations? Look at all the functions; sometimes integrated systems don’t go as deep as specialised products in some areas.
  • Avoiding problems: This is a hard one to consider objectively. It is challenging to think about what is going wrong in our business – are we losing customers because of poor communication? Are we not following up in a timely fashion? Even worse, are we making mistakes that cost us internally or even worse, cost our reputation?
  • Decision-making capability: Integrated systems will often make a difference here. When information is all together in one place, we can better see trends and more easily identify problems. For example, are all the leads from one source not converting well through the sales process – perhaps they are the wrong type of customer?

Bringing it all together

You don’t need to boil the ocean and consider every option, diving into excruciating detail on all these questions. As you have read the points above, you might already be thinking, “This point doesn’t apply to me”, or “OK, but I already have system x, which is an essential and central part of what I do – my CRM needs to work around that”. When I work with clients on these challenges, we quickly focus on specific, realistic options to compare. It works best when you are pragmatic and narrow down your choice set quickly. Every choice becomes easier when considering something real, not abstract concepts. By focusing on your specific business needs, you’ll cut through analysis paralysis and arrive at a clear path forward.

For example, for the consulting example we began with, we might quickly move to comparing three options:

  • Keeping MailerLite, considering some integration of customer and project information with Monday.com
  • The above option but also including an investment in the monday .com CRM module
  • Replacing MailerLite with one integrated sales/marketing CRM product and again considering some integration with monday .com. Or if replacing monday .com is on the table, considering a broader integrated option like HighLevel

These bounded choices can be compared thoughtfully against the cost and value criteria. A first parse might even knock out one option very quickly—perhaps the investment in a new CRM might be costly and not have clear additional value. Then, the business might experiment with integrating some important information before making any big choices or investments.

Would you like some help with this process for your business? The sooner you start evaluating your options, the sooner you can streamline your business operations and boost customer satisfaction. My years of experience, plus complete independence from vendors, mean that I can objectively help you identify and narrow down options quickly and pragmatically while also helping you see options that you might not have otherwise considered. Book a call to get some help.

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