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Custom CRM

Custom CRM Software Development

Most businesses pay for Salesforce or HubSpot, use 20% of it, and work around the rest. We've run our own company on a CRM we built since 2011, so we know what a good one needs. We'll build yours around how you actually work.

Talk to Rob and Jaseor ring 01474 639 089

You'll be talking to one of us, not a salesperson.

Got something on your mind?

Why most CRMs disappoint

Salesforce is a remarkable piece of software. So is HubSpot. The trouble is that they were designed to serve millions of different businesses, so they serve none of them perfectly.

Your sales process isn't a SaaS startup's. Your customer data doesn't fit their fields. Your reports don't match the default dashboards. So your team spends half its time working around the system.

If people keep spreadsheets alongside the CRM, avoid features because they're fiddly, or export data to report on it, your CRM isn't working for you. Most CRMs fail because they're built around a sales process nobody in the company actually follows.

We use ours every day.

Every lead, client project, invoice, task and support conversation at Dev Partners runs through a system we built ourselves, called CoreCRM. It started because nothing else did what we needed, and it's been in production since 2011.

If you found us searching for CoreCRM, a quick word: it's our internal platform and it isn't for sale. What it does mean is that we know exactly what a CRM has to do in a working business, because we rely on one. We can build yours.

What a custom CRM can do

  • Contacts and companies

    Everyone you deal with, with the full history in one place.

  • Your pipeline

    Stages that match how you really sell, not a template.

  • Tasks and activity

    Who's doing what, and what's been said, without chasing.

  • Your own fields, views and reports

    The information you need, in the shape you need it, without exporting anything.

  • Permissions

    Everyone sees what they should, and only that.

  • Quotes, jobs and invoices

    From enquiry through to getting paid, if that's useful, in one system.

  • Integrations

    Connected to your accounts package, website, warehouse or anything else with an API.

  • Automation

    When a deal reaches a stage, the system does the next job: a quote, a task, or a message to the warehouse.

Who it suits

Custom CRMs work best for established businesses with a way of working worth protecting: trades and service firms, training companies, publishers, wholesalers and anyone whose customers aren't a neat sales funnel. If your work runs on bookings, jobs, courses or renewals, a sales CRM will always feel like a square peg.

Settings or code?

There's a big difference between customising a CRM and building one. Renaming a field from Company to Organisation is a setting. Making a deal at a certain stage trigger work in your warehouse system is code.

The second kind is what we do, and it's what turns a CRM from a place where data sits into something the business runs on.

We've been working with Rob and the team for about 10 years now. They helped us build a completely bespoke CRM from scratch which manages our daily business and is always well maintained.
Quality Pet Care

Do you actually need a custom one?

Probably not if

You're small, your sales process is simple, and HubSpot or Pipedrive does what you need. Buy it and get on with your life. We'll tell you if that's the case.

Worth a look if

The way you work is part of why customers pick you, your CRM is full of workarounds, or per-seat subscriptions keep growing while half the features go unused.

Definitely if

Your CRM is really your whole operation: bookings, jobs, courses, projects and accounts, all tied together. We built one for PSS Project Skills Solutions covering CRM, course booking and project management.

How we'd build yours

We start by watching how the work really happens: where enquiries come from, who picks them up, what gets written down and what lives in somebody's head. The CRM you need is usually smaller than you think, and that's a good thing.

Then we build it in two-week steps, starting with the part that hurts most. Your team uses it early and tells us what's wrong, so you don't get a six-month silence followed by a big reveal, and you decide at each step whether to carry on.

We've made most of the mistakes on our own system, which runs our leads, projects, invoices, tasks and time every day. You get the benefit of that without paying for it.

Moving from what you've got

Whether you're leaving a spreadsheet, an Access database or an expensive subscription, your data comes with you. We clean it, map it and move it, and you can run both side by side until you trust the new one.

You own the code and the data, and it's built on proven, maintainable technology, so there's no lock-in. Then we look after it, and it changes as your business does.

How we build custom software

Questions we get asked

  • Can I buy CoreCRM?

    No. It's our internal platform. We build CRMs for clients around how they work, and everything we've learned running ours goes into yours.

  • Can it connect to Xero or FreeAgent?

    Yes. Accounts packages are one of the most common things we connect.

  • Do we pay per user?

    No. It's yours, so there are no licence fees for adding people.

  • How do we start?

    Tell us how you work today and what's driving you mad. The first chat is free.

Photos of Rob and Jason, who run Dev Partners

Hello, you get us

Rob on the left, Jase on the right. No sales team and no account managers. One of us is on every job, from the first chat to long after it goes live, and the people writing your code sit in the same small team.

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Tell us what you've got

It goes straight to Rob and Jase. You'll hear back from one of us, usually the same day, and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people.

Book a call with usor ring 01474 639 089