When choosing CRM software, you can’t afford to roll the dice. What’s the good of an upgrade if you end up with a product that you can’t tailor to your needs, has features that aren’t helpful or fails to impact the bottom line? Avoid a headache (and wasted budget) later by starting your search the right way now: identifying your CRM requirements.

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CRM Requirements Checklist

This post will:

• Help you understand the primary CRM requirements you should look for
• Explain why you need to gather requirements
• Arm you with questions to ask as a starting point for CRM evaluation
• Provide tips that will make your CRM evaluation and implementation go smoothly

If you’re uncertain about what to look for in a CRM solution, don’t worry, we’re here to help. Understanding your organization’s needs and requirements is the first step. So, read on for a comprehensive CRM checklist to use with our CRM requirements template to assist during the selection process.

Key Requirements

We’ve onboarded over 100,000 users into our software selection platform. This has given us a wealth of insights into their usage patterns based on industry, company size and user persona. By leveraging this data, we’ve identified key requirements you should consider to minimize the risk of selecting the wrong software.

Our goal is to empower you to benefit from the collective experience of your peers who’ve embarked on the same journey before you.

Create a custom CRM requirements list to find the right fit for your business needs.

These requirements are the most common for the average company, but some may not apply to everyone. Different types of CRM systems focus on different capabilities, so it’s vital to know what functionality your organization requires via a CRM needs assessment before shortlisting vendors.

1. Account and Contact Management

Contact management enables you to collect, store and act on data from prospects, leads and customers. You can get a unified view of associated accounts, opportunities, tickets, surveys, notes and communication history.

Advanced CRM systems allow you to locate contacts on a map, filter them according to geographical details and get contact recommendations.

Effective contact management helps you qualify quality leads much quicker. Source

Account management helps create accounts and provides account hierarchy features to link related accounts to the parent account. You can use AI-based sales recommendations to send cross-sell, upsell and retention offers to the right customers at the right time.

Territory management capabilities let you create territories according to country or state and assign them to accounts manually or automatically. You can also create group or individual appointments, include calendar links in emails and help customers pick a date and time suitable for all parties.

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2. Customer Communication Management

Some solutions offer built-in callers that enable you to make calls directly from the system. You can log all calls, record important ones and set reminders. Schedule calls easily and categorize different call types using custom tags.

Some CRM systems allow direct communication from the platform, so you don’t have to switch between solutions. Source

The platform automatically associates emails with respective contact records. Integrate with popular email providers like Gmail and Outlook for easier access. Schedule emails and get real-time notifications whenever prospects open them.

Use pre-built or custom email templates to create quick and personalized email campaigns. Send mass emails and monitor bounce and delivery rates. You can also use AI to analyze email responses and focus on prospects when they’re likely to engage.

With the SMS channel, you need CRM solutions that can provide insights into performance and analyze which templates receive higher responses. You can also schedule SMSes by time zone and use templates to create messages quickly.

3. Dashboards and Reports

Look for systems that provide pre-built and custom reports and dashboards. Some solutions offer bar, line, pie, column, funnel, heatmap and donut charts to visualize data. You can create customizable reports using a drag-and-drop interface and analyze data as needed.

Dashboards let you easily visualize large amounts of data. Source

CRM software lets you generate detailed deal and email reports to monitor engagement. Such tools help track performance and monitor campaign progress.

You can also share dashboards, export them as PDFs and email them to selected people. Export reports as XLS or CSV files and schedule their automatic delivery regularly. Preview reports before publishing to maintain data accuracy.

4. Document Management

If you’re a large firm with many files to manage, document management is an important CRM requirement. Advanced CRM solutions use NLP for easy document search and offer document conversion for online viewing.

Document management enhances file organization and lets you upload documents from multiple sources. Source

You can store documents and attachments in a central repository with role-based access to keep confidential files safe. Some CRM systems even let you share files with an encrypted link via email or chat. You can also attach documents to CRM records like leads, accounts, contacts and deals, improving organization.

• Advanced search capabilities
• Document conversion
• Document repository
• Document sharing
• File attachments
• Playbooks
• Version history

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5. Lead Management

Two critical parts of customer relationship management are generating and properly managing leads. Automatic lead distribution capabilities help assign sales reps to leads based on geography and product. Lead scoring is a key feature to look out for, which helps customize scoring rules so you can rank leads accurately.

Pipelines help keep sales stages neat and organized. Source

Mobile card scanner apps let you enter business information into the platform. Robust CRM systems offer AI that captures insights from sales activities and identifies which leads are likely to convert or get stuck in the pipeline. You can also get the next best steps to qualify leads and capture prospects from LinkedIn by pulling in their job title and location.

• AI in lead conversion
• AI in lead management
• Automatic lead distribution
• Card scanner
• Data enrichment
• Email parser
• Leads capture
• Lead scoring
• LinkedIn prospects capture
• Win-loss analysis

6. Mobile Capabilities

All the top CRMs include mobile capabilities, often through an iOS or Android app you can download to your smartphone, tablet and other devices. With these tools, sales reps can schedule meetings, update information, collaborate and close deals on the go.

Mobile CRM apps help update and access data anywhere, anytime. Source

Flexibility is key. The system should sync with the mobile app so users can access the CRM data from anywhere with an internet connection, enhancing productivity. Some advanced solutions also provide offline access that helps create, update and delete records without a connection.

• Native mobile apps
• Offline access
• Responsive design

7. Opportunity/Deal Management

It’s essential to know how well your CRM manages opportunities and how marketing and sales teams can collaborate. CRM system users can manage sales opportunities from the first contact to sales closure, assigning each lead to the most qualified sales rep to nurture them and ensuring every lead gets attention.

Opportunities tab in SAP.

Will Yang, Head of Growth and Marketing at Instrumentl, highlighted the role of opportunities and deals management in improving sales processes and increasing conversion rates:

By tracking each sales opportunity from lead to close, sales teams gain valuable insight into what’s working and not working in their pipeline. They can see where deals are stalling or dropping out, identify gaps in their qualification or nurturing processes, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their approach.

For example, if a sales team notices a high percentage of opportunities in the proposal stage are not progressing to close, they may need to improve how they set buyer expectations around next steps or strengthen their negotiation skills. A CRM provides transparency into these trends so sales leaders can coach their teams accordingly.”

Additionally, you can send emails, make calls, and create appointments and tasks. Generate new opportunities, filter them as needed and assign win-probability across various stages. Most CRMs provide multiple sales pipelines and let you import pipelines from other systems. This provides visibility into several opportunities from a single view.

• Activity management
• AI in opportunity management
• Journey designer
• Multiple sales pipeline
• Opportunity management
• Opportunity probability
• Opportunity rotting
• Sales pipeline/Kanban view of opportunities

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8. Partners and Vendors Management

Partners can add new leads in the sales pipeline, tag records, access products and quotes, and generate invoices. CRM solutions enable you to recruit, onboard, train and support channel partners. They provide partners with access to relevant content, campaigns and more.

Manage your partners in the sales pipeline with ease using CRM systems. Source

Use partner scorecards to get insight into partner selling statistics and contributions and monitor partner performance. The systems allow vendors to view orders and leave comments on orders associated with them. You can also set password protection and different access permissions for vendor and partner portal users.

• Automated sharing
• Partner portal
• Partner relationship management
• Partner scorecard
• Portal permissions
• Vendor portal

9. Products Management

This CRM requirement helps generate custom products with product codes and notes, making product management easier to handle. You can create custom-branded portals and use views to display records with colors, tags and more.

Manage products, categories and price lists in solutions like Pipeliner CRM. Source

CRM solutions help filter deals and contacts and set up product catalogs with pricing information. You can also classify and group products based on brand and category.

• Custom portals
• Custom products
• Product catalog
• Product groups

10. Quote, Order and Contract Management

Automatic order creation tools can help you create contracts manually or automatically from quotes, orders and opportunities. You can effectively manage contracts, track details and attach photocopies for easy access. The system lets you issue invoices using custom templates and assign sales reps when the payment due date approaches.

It lets you create orders from templates. You can track activities, documents and communications associated with each order. Group orders based on contacts, accounts, stages and budgets. The solution also facilitates supply and payment schedules and lets you issue contracts and invoices accordingly.

• Automatic order creation
• Contract creation
• Contract management
• Invoice management
• Order generation
• Order history
• Order segmentation
• Quote generation
• Supply and payment schedule

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11. Sales Performance Management

This capability is crucial to sales operations and target management. You can create sales campaigns via email, telephone, social media, advertisement and webinars and analyze their effectiveness using reports and statistics.

Measure sales and pipeline performance using tools such as Apptivo. Source

The system provides sales forecasting and nuanced insights into performance based on sales reps, teams, companies and products. Gamification allows sales managers to encourage healthy competition and enhance team and individual performance.

Ian Sells, CEO of Million Dollar Sellers, told us that effective sales management is key to hitting revenue targets:

These systems provide detailed analytics and forecasting tools that help in setting realistic sales goals and tracking progress. By understanding customer patterns and sales performance, companies can make informed adjustments to their strategies, ensuring steady revenue growth.”

Advanced CRM solutions offer AI that detects anomalies based on past performance and keeps you informed about sales performance in real time. You can also predict campaign success and get goal recommendations, further helping you craft business strategies.

According to Tim White, Founder of milepro, CRM systems are pivotal for achieving long-term business growth:

They help maintain detailed customer histories and preferences, which guide future interactions and strategies. For instance, at milepro, our CRM’s robust data analysis tools have enabled us to anticipate market trends and adjust our offerings accordingly, fostering sustained growth.”

• AI-based anomaly detector
• AI-based coaching actions
• Gamification
• Goals management
• Sales campaigns
• Sales forecasting
• Target achievement

12. Team Collaboration

Team collaboration is an essential part of what runs companies, and you should do everything in your power to ensure it goes smoothly. With CRM systems, you only have to worry about the communication part, as they take care of collaboration and provide multiple avenues to do so.

You can create team groups, share attachments, and post and get updates from various channels in a centralized system. Sales reps can send their locations using geotagging to keep everyone informed and mention people in posts and comments to get their attention.

Chat directly from CRMs and save time by using a singular platform. Source

The private chat functionality helps share sales updates with internal stakeholders and maintain confidentiality. Add tags manually or automatically to categorize, identify and segment records for easy access.

• Feeds
• GeoTagging
• @Mention
• Private chat
• Tags
• User groups

13. Workflows and Process Automation

A good CRM will make your teams more efficient and productive. To that end, many include workflow automation features, such as sending reminders of a scheduled sales call or notifications when a new lead enters the system.

You can set up approval processes and custom workflows that automate tasks. These workflows get automatically triggered on meeting certain conditions, saving time and effort. You can also use pre-built templates or build custom ones from scratch to aid this process.

Yang explained how his sales team increased productivity by over 20% within the first quarter of rolling out automated workflows:

We leveraged workflow automation in our client onboarding process to automatically send welcome emails and assign follow-up tasks once a new account was created in the system. This eliminated the need for sales reps to manually initiate these steps for every new client, allowing them to spend more time building relationships and less time on administrative work.”

Sells also shared his experience with automation:

Automated workflows in CRM systems are game-changers for operational efficiency. By automating tasks such as lead qualification and customer support tickets, our team could focus on creating more meaningful customer engagements and closing sales. This not only improves productivity but also enhances the overall customer experience.”

• Approval rules
• Predefined workflow templates
• Sales process editor
• Validation rules
• Workflow rules

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14. Integration and Extensibility

Good CRM platforms should provide integrations with accounting, BI software, business phone systems, CPQ, eCommerce, email marketing, ERP, G Suite, helpdesk systems, marketing automation and project management systems.

Additionally, it should provide extensibility to the following platforms and capabilities:

15. Platform Security

Look for systems that offer robust data security features, including audit logs to track activity and data encryption at rest. These measures ensure that sensitive information remains protected, whether it’s stored in databases or backup copies.

IP address restrictions offer an added layer of security by controlling access based on location or network. Compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA guarantees that you handle customer data responsibly.

Additionally, CRM systems provide role-based permissions to tailor access levels, along with support for single sign-on and two-factor authentication for trusted access.

• Audit log
• Data encryption at rest
• IP address restriction
• Privacy and data protection compliance
• Role-based permissions
• Single sign-on and trusted authentication
• Two-factor authentication

Why Is Requirements Gathering Important for CRM Selection?

Requirements gathering is essential for any business decision, helping generate a list of functional, technical and vendor requirements. Knowing what requirements to look for ensures you’ve clear expectations with deliverables and enables you to make the right choice.

Yang emphasized the importance of turning broad objectives like “improve customer service” or “increase sales” into precise benchmarks, such as “decrease customer wait time by 50% year over year” or “generate 20% more qualified leads each quarter.”

He added:

Setting these concrete targets helps determine what data and functionality the CRM platform must provide to achieve them.”

No one knows your business better than you. So it’s important to figure out your expectations from the platform before you start looking for one. Once you know what you want the software to do for your organization, it becomes way easier to evaluate solutions that line up with your needs.

Stressing the significance of tailored CRMs, Jennifer Burton, General Manager at Oaks Dumpster Rental, said:

A tailored CRM system can address unique business challenges and enhance efficiency. For instance, in the waste management industry, we need CRMs to manage large volumes of bookings and coordinate schedules efficiently, ensuring we meet customer expectations and maintain service quality.”

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Key Questions To Ask Before Choosing a CRM

Before you begin, it’s important to identify your company’s key requirements. This will make your search more effective and less time-consuming. We’ve created a list of questions you can ask to kickstart the process:

1. What goals are you trying to accomplish?

Start your CRM requirements document with a plan and expectations to avoid ending up with a system that doesn’t benefit your business. Here are some considerations:

• Are you looking for a full-fledged system or just enough to replace your spreadsheet or pen-and-paper approach?
• What’s your customer base: B2C or B2B? B2C and B2B CRMs differ, so be aware of their nuances.
• Do you need cloud or on-premise deployment? It depends on various factors — Are you replacing an existing CRM? What level of accessibility do you require? How much customization is necessary for your operations?
• What are your desired outcomes? Think about streamlined sales, marketing and customer service processes, integrated analytics and performance tracking, and advanced tools like VoIP and collaboration platforms.

2. How much technical assistance do you have access to?

Determine your CRM’s flexibility. Some systems are user-friendly, while others need IT expertise. Additionally, complex systems are harder to implement and may require vendor or partner support. This is especially true for on-premise solutions with extensive customization options.

3. What size is your business?

Not all CRM systems are built equal. Some cater to small businesses, others to large enterprises, each with varying complexity.Be sure you have the resources to handle the system’s demands; otherwise it may complicate tasks instead of simplifying them.

4. What’s your budget?

Cost is another major factor at play. Solutions for global organizations have more features and higher prices. Often, these products require more technical assistance and support, which further drives up the cost.

For SaaS solutions that charge per user, the number of users will also impact how much you’ll pay.

5. Does the vendor offer industry-specific solutions?

Although CRMs are robust, you should know whether they have features that support the industry your company is in. This varies widely, so be sure to perform due diligence.

Industry-specific solutions are crucial for niche industries with particular requirements. For example, a non-profit might need capabilities for event planning and fundraising. Be sure to incorporate these special considerations when filling out your CRM requirements template.

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How To Evaluate CRM Software

CRM evaluation is the process of assessing how suitable a CRM system is for your organization. Here are a few steps to follow:

• Select Vendors: Make sure you’re in good shape with a well-defined strategy before looking for vendors. Determine if the goal is to produce powerful sales and improve revenue, manage leads, deals, contacts and conversations, or scale operations to increase productivity. Next, prepare a list of industry-leading vendors and consider how each caters to your needs.
• Choose Selection Criteria: This is important to narrow down your search. Figure out your annual cost by multiplying the total number of users by the cost per month. Other factors to consider are implementation time, hidden fees, integrations and customization options.
• Create a Scorecard: Next, score every vendor based on their ranking for each criterion to understand which vendor will be the best for your business. Our free platform lets you compare up to five products that are scored based on the requirements you choose.

Compare CRM products based on your unique requirements.

Lean Methodology

To help you further in the CRM evaluation process, we’ve outlined nine essential tips. Our Lean Selection methodology will help you recognize the final two or three best matches for your business needs.

The nine simple steps are:

1. Establish: Figure out why you need a new system.
2. Collaborate: Create a committee to gather requirements collaboratively.
3. Define: Prepare a detailed list of features and requirements.
4. Distribute: Evaluate how potential vendors score against your requirements list.
5. Justify: After these steps, determine if you need a new tool, want integrations or upgrades, or are fine with the current solution.
6. Prove: Approach your chosen vendors to show demos, proofs-of-concept (POCs) and use cases to check how well the platform executes your desired features.
7. Rank: Compare requirements and demo scores of each vendor and rank them accordingly.
8. Negotiate: Review the most suitable contract and consider signing with that vendor. If the agreement and terms look sketchy, get advice from a lawyer. Review other choices until you both achieve agreeable conditions.
9. Sign: Sign with your top vendor and pay the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Select the Right Software with the Free Lean Selection Book

Key Considerations

While preparing a CRM requirements document, include these questions to ask vendors before making an investment:

• Has your solution helped other SMBs? If yes, how? Ask for contact details of some past and existing customers to ensure a proven track record of success.
• How extensive are your online service and customer support? Choose a reliable vendor who offers service-level agreement (SLA) to ensure quick responses from the support team.
• What’s the pricing structure? Do they charge hourly, monthly or annually? It’d be wise to opt for a pay-as-you-go subscription model with an option to add services as needed. Collect detailed plans in writing.
• How do upgrades work? Does the vendor offer services ahead of the curve? Ask for instances of innovation they’ve executed before finalizing.
• What scalability options do you offer? The right cloud solution should cope with your changing business needs and help you grow.
• How customizable is it? Many CRMs offer templates and filters to help you tailor the platform to your unique business requirements. Identify which customizations would make your daily processes easier and ease your team’s burden.
• Is it user-friendly? Invest in a solution with an intuitive user interface and simple design. It helps everyone adapt quickly and focus on their work.
• How secure is the platform? This is non-negotiable. Customer data is invaluable, and protecting it is paramount. The platform must maintain privacy and safeguard profitable business relationships.
• What’s the usual implementation and onboarding duration? Understand the time required to get the system up and running. Ask for a timeline and steps involved in the implementation process to ensure it aligns with your schedule and business needs.
• Is it easy to track deals using the pipeline? Ensure the CRM provides a user-friendly and intuitive pipeline for managing and tracing deals. Ask for a demo or examples of how the pipeline feature works in practice.
• Is there any limit to contact storage? Check if the CRM has any restrictions on the number of contacts you can store. This is crucial for scalability as your business grows.
• Will it play well with other business tools? CRM integration with systems like ERP and business intelligence will enhance your platform’s functionality.

If you want to simplify the above process, easily review and rank products, and manage things in one place, check out our free CRM comparison platform.

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How To Create a CRM Requirements List

To get started, here are a few quick tips from Jaisri Narasimman, Principal Research Analyst at SelectHub:

• Define Clear Goals: Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the CRM implementation.
• Involve Key Stakeholders: Ensure buy-in from all departments that will use the CRM and involve them in the requirements gathering process.
• Start Small, Scale Gradually: Begin with essential features and functionalities, then gradually expand based on user feedback and evolving business needs.
• Invest in Training: Provide comprehensive training to users to maximize the adoption and utilization of the CRM.
• Conduct Regular Evaluation: Continuously monitor performance metrics, gather feedback and make necessary adjustments to optimize the CRM strategy.

Navigating the intricacies of creating a comprehensive CRM requirements list can be daunting. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. At SelectHub, our researchers specialize in offering insights into common challenges and effective solutions.

Narasimman explained:

• Articulation and Lack of Clarity: Clients may struggle to articulate their requirements clearly. To address this, we conduct thorough interviews and discovery sessions to understand their pain points and objectives. Our SMEs outline the client’s requirements.
• Scope Creep: Clients may request extra features that can bloat the project scope. We prioritize requirements in the SelectHub platform based on their impact on achieving the client’s goals and managing scope creep. We also assign weights to different requirements groups for a comprehensive prioritization.
• Resistance to Change: Employees may resist adopting new CRM systems. We address this challenge by involving key stakeholders early in the process, providing training on SelectHub’s collaborative technology selection management platform and highlighting the benefits of using its various modules.

1. Start With a CRM Requirements Template

If you need to build a functional requirements document for a CRM selection project, starting with an existing CRM template is ideal. We’ve built a CRM requirements gathering template based on the best practices we’ve developed through years of helping companies select software. By using a template, you’ll have a majority of requirements that businesses look for pre-filled for your use. This will save you a ton of time.

To help out your CRM evaluation, our free selection platform makes it easy to customize the default requirements template for your company. You can add or remove requirements, set their priority, select which modules are relevant, and choose your industry and company size.

Set your preferences for industry, company size and modules.

2. Get Stakeholder Collaboration

Once you have your template and have updated it with any additional CRM requirements, you’ll want to invite all stakeholders to view it. There are some collaborative tools out there for documents, including Google Drive. You can also use software for CRM evaluation, such as our platform.

3. Rank and Prioritize Features and Functionality

Your next step is to rank the requirements you’ve defined. You could set up a ranking system in a spreadsheet, but our free selection platform makes it way easier to manage the requirements ranking process.

Have all stakeholders rank and prioritize the requirements according to their individual needs. Set priorities as high, medium or low. This approach will help you quickly gain consensus while significantly reducing the number of meetings and uncertainty involved in the process.

Rank and prioritize requirements based on individual needs.

4. Summarize and Formalize

Once all parties have submitted their priorities, summarize the results into a formal report to be reviewed by everyone involved. You’ll be able to see what requirements are necessary or unnecessary. You’ll discuss why some requirements fall into various categories to understand what the outcome of each one would be if it were to be included or excluded.

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FAQs

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Next Steps

The CRM evaluation process is a marathon, not a sprint. Although it’s far from easy, assessing your business needs, gathering your CRM requirements list and applying these tips can ease the burden.

If you’re looking to streamline the process, our free CRM requirements template can help you save time by providing a pre-built set of key criteria based on industry standards.

What CRM requirements are most key to your organization? Let us know in the comments!

SME Contributors

Will Yang is the Head of Growth and Marketing at Instrumentl, an all-in-one grants platform that helps nonprofits find, track and manage their grants in a single place. He has a decade of B2B SaaS experience, having previously co-founded an edtech company named Albert. He led the sales, marketing and customer success team from zero to several million ARR.

Ian Sells is the CEO of Million Dollar Sellers, an entrepreneurial community and the Co-founder of JoinBrands.com, RebateKey, Pixelfy.me. After running, growing and selling multiple companies, he transitioned into helping existing companies grow and scale their online eCommerce business through different distribution channels and utilizing the latest internet marketing tactics.

Tim White is the Founder of milepro, a travel and business solutions website. He’s a seasoned IT sales executive with a broad functional background and a proven track record of developing and maintaining lasting, profitable business relationships in a complex sales environment.

Jennifer Burton is the General Manager at Oaks Dumpster Rental, a dumpster rental company that offers services for both homes and businesses. She’s a seasoned executive with 20+ years of experience in sales and business development. Jennifer specializes in B2B sales to the C-suite.

Jaisri Narasimman is a Principal Research Analyst at SelectHub and a graduate of NTU Singapore. She honed her data mining and curation skills during her post-graduate education, focusing on developing strategies to help businesses make the most of their data. In her role at SelectHub, her research spans categories like HR, CRM and EHR.