Sound familiar?
- Your CRM was bought for its features but staff still use a spreadsheet
- Per-user licences keep rising as the team grows
- Quotes are built in Word and the numbers are copied by hand
- Nobody can see the full history of a customer in one place
- The off-the-shelf CRM cannot handle your contracts, renewals or site visits
Key facts
- Pipeline stages, fields and rules modelled on your real sales process
- No per-seat licence fees: you own the CRM outright
- Email and calendar sync through Microsoft Graph or the Gmail API
- Quotes and orders built from your price lists, then pushed to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage
- Website enquiries captured straight into the pipeline
- Role-based access so reps see their own accounts and managers see everything
When a custom CRM makes sense
Off-the-shelf CRMs are good products, and for many businesses they are the right choice. A custom CRM makes sense when the fit is poor. Typical signs: you sell to sites as well as companies, deals involve several quotes and revisions, contracts renew on complex terms, the sales process includes surveys or technical checks, or your team has given up and gone back to spreadsheets.
Cost is the other trigger. Per-seat pricing on the bigger platforms adds up as a team grows, and advanced features often sit on higher tiers. A bespoke CRM is a one-off build that you own, with optional support, and no charge for adding users.
If you would rather keep your existing CRM and connect it to other systems, see CRM integration instead.
Modelled on how you actually sell
We start by walking through recent deals with your sales team: where enquiries come from, what information is gathered at each step, who approves discounts, what makes a deal stall. That becomes the data model and the pipeline. Fields that matter are required at the right stage, so reports are trustworthy. Fields nobody uses do not exist.
Screens are designed for the people using them most. Field reps get a phone-friendly view of today's visits with notes and a quick way to log the outcome. Office staff get fast search across companies, contacts and sites. Managers get the pipeline, forecast and activity reports they actually look at on a Monday morning, rather than forty default dashboards.
A custom CRM can also hold things generic CRMs struggle with: equipment installed at each customer site, service contract terms, renewal dates with automatic reminders, credit limits pulled from the accounting system, or commission rules for your reps. It can feed directly into staff target management so targets and actuals come from the same data.
Quotes, orders and accounting
Quoting is where many businesses lose time and make mistakes. We build quote builders that pull from your product catalogue and customer-specific price lists, apply discount rules and approval thresholds, and produce a branded PDF. Accepted quotes become orders, and orders become invoices in Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage through their APIs, with the customer record matched rather than duplicated.
Because the CRM knows what has been invoiced and paid, reps can see an account's balance and payment history before they offer more credit.
Email, calendar and website enquiries
A CRM is only complete if conversations are in it. Using Microsoft Graph for Microsoft 365, or the Gmail API for Google Workspace, we log emails with known contacts against the right record and sync meetings to the activity timeline. Website forms post enquiries straight into the pipeline with the source recorded, so you can see which marketing actually produces sales.
Automated follow-ups handle the routine: a reminder when a quote has had no reply for a week, a renewal notice ninety days out, a task when a key account has had no contact for a quarter.
Data protection in a CRM
A CRM is mostly personal data: names, emails, phone numbers and notes about conversations. Under UK GDPR you need a lawful basis for holding it, the ability to find and export everything about a person, and a way to delete or anonymise it when asked or when it is no longer needed. We build those tools in: a subject access export, an anonymise action that keeps sales history but removes the person, marketing consent fields with timestamps and source, and retention rules that flag old records. An audit log records who viewed or changed sensitive records.
Moving from your current CRM or spreadsheets
We migrate contacts, companies, deals and history from spreadsheets, Access or an existing CRM's export or API, cleaning duplicates on the way. Migration is rehearsed on a copy first, then run for real at a quiet moment. See data migration for how we keep that safe.
Every CRM project starts with a free chat, then scoping and a fixed-price quote. The system is one of the bespoke software types we build most, and it often grows into a customer portal later, sharing the same database. Get in touch to talk it through.
What we deliver
- Contacts, companies and sites with a full activity timeline
- A sales pipeline with your stages, probabilities and required fields
- Quote builder using your products, price lists and discounts
- Tasks, reminders and automated follow-up emails
- Integrations with email, calendar, accounting and your website forms
- Sales dashboards and forecast reports
How it works and what it costs
Every project gets a fixed-price quote after a free initial chat and a short scoping stage. You own the code and the data.
Free chat
Tell us the problem in plain English: what you do now, what goes wrong and what "better" looks like. No charge, no obligation.
Scoping
We map the processes, systems and data involved, agree what is in and out, and write it down so there are no surprises.
Fixed-price quote
You get a fixed price for the agreed scope, or a phased plan for bigger builds, so you can start small and prove it works.
Build and test
We build in short stages you can see and try, test against real data, then go live carefully with a rollback plan.
Hand over and look after
You own the code and the data. We can host it, support it and keep improving it, or hand it to your own team.
Frequently asked questions
Is a custom CRM better than HubSpot or Salesforce?
Not for everyone. Those platforms suit many businesses well. dijitul recommends a custom CRM when your process needs heavy workarounds, when per-seat costs keep rising, or when the CRM must hold industry-specific data such as sites, assets or contracts that generic tools handle badly.
Can the CRM log emails from Outlook?
Yes. dijitul uses Microsoft Graph to log emails and meetings with known contacts against the right customer record, with permissions set so staff control which mailboxes are synced. Gmail and Google Calendar are supported through Google's APIs.
Can it create invoices in Xero?
Yes. Accepted quotes can become orders and then invoices in Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage through their APIs. dijitul matches customers to existing accounting contacts to avoid duplicates and logs every sync.
Do we pay per user?
No. A CRM built by dijitul is yours outright, so adding staff costs nothing in licences. Hosting and optional support are separate, and the price for the build itself is a fixed quote agreed before work starts.
Can you move our data from our current CRM?
Yes. dijitul exports contacts, companies, deals and activity history from your current CRM or spreadsheets, clean duplicates, and rehearses the migration on a copy before the real switch-over, so nothing is lost on the day.
Related
Tell us what you need to build
Free chat, clear scope, fixed-price quote. You own everything we build.