CRM requirements in 2024

What are CRM requirements?

CRM requirements are the specific set of features, capabilities, and tools you need a CRM solution to have. These are the must-have functionalities that make a CRM valuable to your organization.

Types of CRM requirements to consider

When selecting a CRM solution, it's essential to consider various types of requirements that will ensure the system aligns perfectly with your business needs. Each category serves a specific purpose in successfully deploying and using the CRM system. Understanding and defining these requirements clearly can assist in narrowing down the options to find a CRM that works for your organization. 

1. Business requirements

Business requirements are the high-level needs that align with your strategic goals. When considering CRM software, it's crucial to understand how the system will support key business objectives such as increasing sales, improving customer retention, or enhancing operational efficiency. Define these requirements by analyzing your business strategy and discussing needs with stakeholders to ensure the CRM aligns with your long-term goals.

2. Functional requirements

Functional requirements detail what the CRM software must do to facilitate your business processes. These include the specific tasks and operations the system should be capable of handling, such as lead generation, customer data management, interaction tracking, and report generation. Prioritize these functionalities based on their impact on your business processes.

3. User Interface requirements 

The user interface (UI) requirements focus on how the CRM software is laid out and how users interact with it. The CRM should be intuitive, easy to navigate, and accessible for all users, including those with disabilities. Consider aspects like dashboard customization, ease of learning, and visual appeal. The goal is a seamless user experience that enhances productivity without causing frustration or requiring excessive training.

4. Non-functional or technical requirements 

Non-functional or technical requirements encompass the underlying aspects of CRM software that support its functionality. These include system performance, security, scalability, and integration capabilities. For example, the CRM should handle a large volume of data efficiently, maintain high availability, and ensure data security through compliance with standards such as GDPR. Technical requirements also cover the software's ability to integrate with existing tools like email platforms, ERP systems, and other business applications, ensuring a cohesive technology ecosystem.

How to determine your business’s CRM requirements

Establishing a thorough CRM requirements checklist can provide you with confidence that you’ll find the right solution for your business’s unique needs. However, before you start to formulate your CRM selection criteria, there are some high-level considerations to make. 

1. Establish a budget for your CRM

You’ll want to implement a CRM tool that produces a positive ROI for your business. To do so, consider the budget and resources you can allot to implement a new CRM solution. This doesn’t just include the annual licensing fees you’ll pay to use the system but also any ongoing maintenance or upfront implementation and data migration costs.

Set a limit for the total cost of ownership you can afford for a new CRM solution, using this figure as a guiding factor during the purchasing process. Even if you find a CRM that offers all the right features and functionality, you need to make sure it’s financially viable for the business. 

2. Communicate better with team members and customers

Before diving into the specific features you require, you need to start with a high-level understanding of what the CRM will help you accomplish. Speak with key stakeholders to determine how to improve customer experience, sales process, and marketing campaigns using CRM. 

These conversations will help you materialize the specific features and capabilities your ideal CRM will have. For instance, when speaking with your top sales reps to learn about their main pain points, they may explain that their biggest hurdle each day is the time they spend sending out follow-up emails, scheduling meetings, and other administrative tasks. Thus, you may want to prioritize a platform that fits your budget and offers easy-to-use workflow automation features. 

3. Access sales channels

You can also dive into your sales channels to get a firsthand look at how you currently manage the sales process and build customer relationships, and where there is room for improvement. This also helps you understand which channels are most critical to bringing in revenue and should be prioritized in the new CRM–whether that’s robust email marketing, social media integrations, telephony, or others.

What is a CRM requirement checklist?

A CRM requirements checklist is a document or spreadsheet teams can create to list the specific features and capabilities they want in a CRM solution. The checklist helps you narrow down your CRM selection criteria, which you can use throughout the purchasing process to help ensure you select the right tool for your business. 

By creating this list, your team can have a structured, objective way to evaluate potential CRM solutions while ensuring all key stakeholders’ priorities are considered.

Benefits of a CRM requirement checklist

Making a CRM requirements checklist may not seem necessary when shopping for a software solution. However, your CRM plays a critical role in delivering the customer experience and monitoring sales activities, so you don’t want to rush into using a platform without guidance in your purchasing process. 

You need to find a tool that will support your operational goals, so the following benefits show why making a CRM checklist is a good idea.  

1. Comprehensive Compilation of CRM Requirements

Modern CRM platforms are comprehensive and robust, offering a wide range of features to help support your sales, marketing, and customer support functions. While this can be extremely valuable as an integrated solution, it can also be overwhelming to nail down the exact capabilities you require without ending up with a long list of features you’re paying for but don’t need. 

When building the checklist, you can take the time to consider what core functionalities you need the CRM to have and solidify your priorities in writing. This CRM checklist will work as an essential resource during the buying process, ensuring you don’t skip over any critical features or get convinced into paying for unnecessary functionality. 

2. Fine-tuning CRM Software Requirements

Making a CRM requirements checklist is valuable because it’s a dynamic document that you can update and change as needed throughout the selection process. The first checklist you come up with does not have to be its final form; it can help you hone in on the exact features you must have while identifying which capabilities are unnecessary. 

3. Improved Teamwork

Numerous departments within the organization will utilize the CRM, including sales, marketing, and others. So, collaborating on a CRM requirements checklist before making the purchase allows each team to provide their input, ensuring the solution you select serves each department's priorities. The checklist promotes better communication and teamwork, with no department feeling left out in the decision-making process. 

4. Sharing and Accessibility

Creating a CRM requirements checklist in a spreadsheet or document allows you to easily share your priorities with key stakeholders or CRM vendors. A shareable checklist is an efficient way to express what you’re looking for.

CRM requirements template

To help you create a CRM requirements checklist that ensures you find a tool that ticks all your boxes, here is a template to get you started. This checklist includes common features that are relevant to most CRM users. However, when crafting your CRM checklist, consider which CRM capabilities and features are most important to your business and industry and customize the list accordingly. 

1. Accounts and contacts management

The core feature of any CRM is a database where you can store, organize, and manage customer contact information. Within the contact database, you can store demographic data, order history, past interactions, sales call notes, and more.

Using this data, your team can get a 360-degree view of all customer accounts, providing necessary insights to build better relationships and provide support when needed. Most CRMs should offer this feature, though be aware of any data storage limits they’ll impose for users, like only allowing a certain number of contacts in a given plan. 

2. Customer communication management

Another critical feature to look for in a CRM is the ability to connect with your customers from within the platform. Many CRMs offer built-in communication channels like SMS, email, and chat; some even include a cloud telephony option to speak with them over the phone without leaving the CRM. 

Beyond the direct communication channels, a CRM should help you keep track of all interactions, take notes, and schedule calls, reminders, and SMS or email campaigns to put your customer communications on autopilot. 

3. Dashboards and reports

In sales, time is money, and your team shouldn’t waste their valuable time digging through various pages and running specialized reports each time they need to view a specific set of performance data or activity metrics. The best CRM tools will offer pre-built reports and dashboards, allowing you to display the information and metrics that are most relevant to your workflows. 

Certain CRM tools will have a variety of options for data visualization, helping your team select the format that is most appropriate and impactful to their workday. 

4. Documents management

Any CRM you use should include a document management feature where you can upload and store important files and attachments for future reference. Many CRMs now leverage natural language processing (NLP) technology, which turns uploaded documents into searchable text files, so access to any information stored in them is just a simple search away. 

5. Leads management

A CRM should help you generate and manage leads, making it easier for your team to close more deals. Many platforms will have a distribution tool to help you automatically assign leads to sales reps, ensuring that your team can take advantage of all opportunities coming their way without letting any potential deals accidentally slip through the cracks. 

Another helpful lead management tool is automated lead scoring, helping your team prioritize which leads to go after. This feature automatically flags sales-ready prospects based on their behavior and engagement and recommends the best actions to move them down the pipeline. 

6. Opportunities/Deals management

A good CRM will include a robust sales pipeline feature to help you manage all incoming opportunities and pending deals. This capability will allow you to track all deals from initial contact to closing the sale. Look for a tool that supports multiple custom sales pipelines to define sales stages to reflect your business’s needs and visualize deal progress for better conversions. 

Your CRM should include features to help you track conversions, forecast revenue, and monitor other deal insights so you get a real-time view of your sales team's productivity. 

7. Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) tool

Another CRM requirement to include on your checklist is a configure, price, quote (CPQ) functionality, which can help simplify your sales process and close more deals faster. This feature should help you automate the pricing process and gain better visibility into your quotes and documents. Top CRMs also allow you to set up pricing in multiple currencies to suit your international customers. 

8. Sales performance management

A good CRM should provide plenty of ways to manage contacts, customers, and leads. However, it should also allow you to track the performance of your campaigns and individual sales reps. Using built-in sales reports, goal-setting, and gamified selling features, you can monitor your team’s activities in real-time, providing a visual sales scoreboard to help foster competition and productivity. 

9. Collaboration tools

It’s helpful if your CRM includes built-in tools to support collaboration across your sales team, and with other departments. This prevents you from needing to leave the CRM to send a message to a sales rep or export a report before sharing it with a team member. Plus, it ensures that all team members have access to the exact information they need, when they need it. 

The best CRMs should allow you to share messages, reports, and files with other users within the application, helping to streamline your workflows and work more efficiently. 

10. Workflow automation

A CRM feature that is quickly growing in popularity is workflow automation, helping teams reduce the number of manual, repetitive tasks they need to complete. This might include automated contact scoring based on their data and communication history, automated follow-up emails or messages after leads have triggered a certain action, and more. 

Workflow automation should make your work easier, not unnecessarily complicated. So, prioritize the tools with robust automation capabilities that are easy to set up and customize to your needs. 

11. Products management

Many users find a product management system highly valuable in a CRM. The product catalog helps you manage your product inventory and configure pricing models, discounts, and applicable tax brackets for simpler billing and invoicing.  Within the catalog, you can maintain an up-to-date product list with photos and associated deals and create custom-branded documents that automatically update to offer a seamless buying experience for customers. 

12. Social engagement

As a modern business, a beneficial CRM requirement is social media account management. Consumers across all age ranges are present and active on social media platforms, not just those in the younger generations. So, it’s a valuable channel that can help you interact with prospects, support customers, and monitor your competition to enhance your positioning in the marketplace. 

13. Integration and extensibility

Chances are, a CRM isn’t the only software powering your everyday operations. For optimal efficiency and usability, your CRM should easily integrate with the other business applications you rely on, allowing for seamless data sharing across various sources. 

This includes videoconferencing, messenger apps, and email integration for easier tracking of customer conversations. A CRM should also integrate with systems like your helpdesk, accounting, ERP, project management platform, and more. 

14. Mobile support

In the digital age, you need a CRM that is built for mobile so your sales team can access the key details and information they need while on the go. Some CRMs have only mobile-friendly web browser access to their tool, though a platform with a dedicated mobile app typically offers more functionality and agility. 

One of the key features you’ll want to look for when evaluating the mobile version of a CRM is whether there is an offline mode so you can input and capture important lead data and ensure it will be synced to the system, even when there is poor or no connectivity. The mobile version should also support built-in communication features like call logging or videoconferencing. 

15. Partner and vendor management

Partner and vendor management capabilities within a CRM streamline how you collaborate and track performance across your external network. Centralize all contact information, contracts, agreements, and communication history for partners and vendors within a single system. Use automated workflows to manage onboarding and track deliverables. Enhanced reporting lets you gain insights into partner and vendor performance.

Choosing the right CRM software for your industry

The hunt for the best CRM software is a journey that each company will embark on as they scale. Having the proper tools and resources to manage customer relationships effectively is critical in the modern marketplace, helping companies enhance the buyer experience and leverage advanced technology to improve operational efficiency. 

Given each business's unique needs, customer base, and industry, they will all have their own set of CRM requirements, must-have features, and budget constraints that guide their purchasing decisions. Before implementing a specific solution, solidify your list of CRM requirements using the checklist above as a foundation for the core features most businesses look for. Most CRMs offer a demo or free trial of their platform, so take full advantage of these offers to test out different software before committing to one.

How Freshsales can meet your CRM needs

Though there is a growing number of CRMs on the market, many businesses find that Freshsales CRM is a feature-rich solution that helps them simplify the sales process for better revenue generation, productivity, and insights. 

Our AI-powered CRM supports engagement across channels, allowing you to connect with leads and customers wherever they prefer. Plus, our advanced automation features help you run more strategic campaigns, track performance, and streamline workflows so your team has more time for face-to-face interactions.