

Are you looking for an open source CRM software? Discover our selection of tools, their features, their advantages, and make the right choice.
Where Thought Leaders go for Growth
You may have heard of CRM, or Customer Relationship Management. A very popular concept, it has now become one of the cornerstones of business management.
Indeed, customer data management is set to be the workhorse of marketing campaigns: mastering Customer Relationship Management is the key to running a successful business.
Managing the vast amount of customer data, however, is no easy task. In order to achieve this, countless CRM software have been developed, differing in functionality and method.
Confronted with so many solutions, you may be asking yourself: “Which CRM is best for me?”
Let's take a look at some tips to help you find the best CRM for your company. In this article, you’ll find a comparison of the best CRM software of 2021.
The acronym CRM refers to Customer Relationship Management, i.e. the set of strategies aimed at managing a company's relationships with potential and existing customers.
CRM software is a programme supporting Customer Relationship Management, which helps companies in organising their customer relationships.
While CRM tools were once only used to manage customer relationships, nowadays they have become real systems for managing marketing, sales and all contact and operational data. In fact, CRM software is also used to identify new leads and attract them to the company, to encourage the conversion of prospects, to carry out follow-up, and so on.
CRM software is used with the aim of simplifying processes within a company, optimising them and thus increasing productivity. They are technological solutions, often cloud-based, that allow teams to record, store, analyse and create reports on interactions between the company and its customers. These programmes are very useful in determining customer loyalty and personalising the customer experience.
CRM software is a very useful tool for business management. But how can you tell if you really need them?
Answering a few questions will help you decide:
If the answer to these questions is yes, then it's time for you to acquire a CRM software.
Choosing a customer relationship management (CRM) system starts with assessing your business needs and objectives. The best CRM for a company is in fact the solution that works best for the company itself: there are no objective rankings, but only preferences dictated by the modus operandi and the aims pursued by a given business.
First of all, you have to start the selection process by starting from the assumption that not all CRM solutions are the same, just as not all businesses are the same. Common to all businesses, however, is the fact that to remain competitive they need to offer quality experiences to their customers, and to do this they need a particularly capable CRM solution.
In fact, every business needs a CRM solution that connects all relevant contact data and intelligently presents it to sales partners, vendors and customer service representatives.
Before you can choose the best CRM solution for your business, it is important to understand what CRM is and the benefits it offers.
Every company practices CRM at some level, but in many cases there is a lot of room for improvement. There are many companies that use non-functional or incompatible practices that are inadequate when it comes to providing business teams with a complete view of every customer relationship. With the right CRM solution, however, it is possible to track and analyse the entire customer journey.
In general, CRM software supports the recording of customer contact information. This includes: telephone number, e-mail address, preferred contact channel, social media profile.
After being recorded, the information is organised and kept available: as a result of these operations, the company will have comprehensive reports on its network of contacts. Thanks to this overview, the management of customer relations itself can be visibly improved by the release of key information useful for the implementation of more profitable exchanges. CRM software offers a 360-degree view of the customer, enabling you to develop effective offers and competitive marketing strategies.
The cost of CRM software is very variable: it is even possible to find some software that is completely free. Normally, different pricing plans are available for each software, depending on the functionality of the software.
All major CRM vendors usually provide the possibility to pay on a monthly or annual basis, as well as to extend or restrict the range of services offered with relative ease.
Thanks to the use of CRM software, a company can ideally deepen and implement its customer relationships: it allows to create lasting relationships and, at the same time, to strengthen existing ones. In fact, CRM systems make it possible to increase customer loyalty on the one hand and to strengthen the acquisition power of leads and prospects on the other.
CRM solutions usually offer the possibility of viewing in a customisable dashboard all the data related to the customer and their history with the company, an overview of their orders and any problems that have arisen, etc.; a CRM software therefore allows you to:
Delivering a good customer experience is crucial: it is a prerequisite for building lasting customer relationships and increasing brand loyalty. To do this, however, you need to understand your customers well, but you can't understand what you can't see. This is where CRM software comes in: by linking all customer data and displaying it in the dashboard, it enables fast and effective management.
Decisions based on the data in a CRM system automatically become more reliable. By strengthening customer relationships, you can grow your business on the basis of artificial intelligence, which will help you process data faster and more accurately.
What should you start with? First, you need to assess your specific business needs, assuming that the best CRM solution is the one that works best for your company.
Start your research by reviewing your company's current set of processes, requirements and goals. Consider:
Now that you have a better understanding of your current situation and have looked at how a CRM solution could lead to improvements, it's time to take a look at some of the standard features that any qualified CRM system should have, namely:
Now that you have worked out some basic considerations about a good CRM, you can turn to analysing the features of the best CRM solution for your company.
Zoho CRM is an integrated, cloud-based customer relationship management platform that meets the needs of companies and industries of all sizes and types. Over 150,000 companies worldwide use Zoho CRM to build lasting customer relationships and maximise team productivity.
Zoho CRM offers extensive omnichannel support by phone, email, live chat, social media and in-person meetings make Zoho CRM the most integrated system on the market. Zoho's sales assistant, Zia, powered by artificial intelligence, provides advanced interpretations, solutions and predictions for salespeople.
With Zoho, your sales team can focus more on sales instead of data entry with the help of workflow automation, lead scoring, real-time notifications and built-in gamification.
Key features of Zoho CRM include:
- Lead management;
- Workflow automation;
- Advanced analytics;
- Process management;
- Marketing automation;
- App for iOS and Android (with business card scanner);
- Platform for developers.
Today's customers expect resolutions within minutes and 24/7 personalised service across multiple channels. But most customer service teams struggle to meet these growing demands because their tools and data live on multiple sources.
Service Hub brings all customer service data and channels together in one place and helps scale support through automation and self-service. The result? More time for proactive service, capable of maintaining and growing your customer base. What's more, when using the full HubSpot CRM platform, support representatives can provide a more valuable service.
Whether it's strategies, services or software, HubSpot allows you to manage your business and its complexity. HubSpot has everything you need to grow better.
Growing sales, building customer loyalty, and opening up new opportunities are the key benefits of Salesforce Sales Cloud. The software provider is based in San Francisco and is the originator of cloud computing. It draws inspiration from the global companies it works with to develop software that precisely meets their needs.
Salesforce offers its services for small, medium and large companies. It is therefore adapted to all structures.
Very innovative software solution and the possibility of being part of a very varied community offering a lot of advice and relevant comments.
Subscriptions are degressive according to the number of users per month: offers ranging from €75 to €300 allowing access to more or less advanced features depending on the solution chosen.
Pipedrive CRM is a customer relationship management software, capable of tracking communications and automating follow-ups, through its visual and intuitive dashboards. Thanks to a schedule/complete/follow-up approach, Pipedrive boosts the productivity of sales departments.
The tool allows you to fine-tune your sales process by receiving real-time feedback on your sales performance and identifying bottlenecks.
Pipedrive's main features include:
The benefits of implementing Pipedrive in your company can be summarised as:
Pipedrive is offered in 4 different types of subscriptions, here you can find prices per user per month billed annually:
Monday.com CRM it is not only a CRM, it surpasses those basic function because it is a work OS, which is a cloud-based platform,
Individual: $0 (free lifelong subscription) & only up to 2 users.
The individual package includes:
Standard: Is the most frequently used. It costs $10 per month/ per user. It includes all the functionalities of the Individual, but with more:
Pro: The pro starts at just $16 per month/ per user. It includes:
Enterprise: includes all the pro functionalities such as:
Using CRM to steer your business in the right direction gives you a global and organised view of your company and also allows you to make decisions based on your information. Your data is one of your greatest competitive advantages and, when used competently, is a guarantee for your success. Have you found the solution you were looking for? Feel free to browse our complete list of the best CRM software for even more choice: don't miss the opportunity to grow your business!