In-House CRM Transformation

Development of a custom in-house CRM system for a 200-agent telesales team, improving data access and operational efficiency while significantly reducing costs.

Context

At Shikho, the main revenue channel is the telesales team, that consists of at the time of this writing, 200 agents. These agents are spread across two locations, and follow a sales pipeline strategy to make their sales.

To monitor their sales pipeline and productivity, a CRM system was necessary to be incorporated. Initially, a third party system[LSQ] was set up, and all agents were onboarded there.

As Shikho scaled, we identified a lot of challenges in scaling the CRM to meet our demands. Leading from having access to data, to ever rising costs per agent - we had to go back to the basics to solve the problems.

Identifying the Issue

In using third party CRM, we observed fundamental issues that went against how we wanted to scale our Telesales Organization.

The issues we faced could be grouped into the following buckets -

1. Cost
2. Access to Data
3. Customization

Decision to go In-House

Based on the issues identified, I initiated discussions with the management team to set up a team to develop an in-house CRM.

Although building a CRM in-house would not be an easy feat, the following discussion points helped in making the case for building it in-house:

1. Cost Control: As we already use AWS for our entire application, building the CRM on the cloud infrastructure would help us track the costs of operating the CRM, and introduce cost control measures that keep in line with our budgets. From a financial perspective, we would be moving away from a per-user pricing model that only increases as we scale to a controlled usage-based model that would reduce operational expenses - thereby increasing margins.
2. Infinite Customization Options: Having the development team in-house would enable us to customize the CRM as many times as needed, and help us keep in line with changing business processes and strategy.
3. Complete Access to Data: Building a CRM in-house ensures that we have complete authority over the database that we use; hence ensuring complete access to data. This freedom would enable us to connect the CRM with Tableau or other data lake solutions and leverage the CRM data with application data.

The Requirement

Having the most exposure to the nuances of the sales processes in Shikho, I was entrusted by the management team to lead the team building the Shikho CRM.

Along with the project, I had to deliver the following core objectives of the project:

My Process

Due to the nature of the business, the timeline was very short in building the CRM. This warranted a different approach

Recreate then Innovate

Since the agents had extensively used the third-party CRM, to maintain project deadlines, I decided to recreate all the features they used in that CRM, but each recreation solved a pain point they faced.

In the end, a total of 6 core features were recreated to ensure that the in-house CRM met our needs effectively.

Result & Impact

The Result

With the priorities and the issues in mind, I worked with my team to design and develop the CRM. The entire project, which consisted of design revisions and feature optimizations, enabled us to launch the CRM for the entire Shikho Telesales team in March 2024.

The Impact

The impact of the entire project can be measured in two categories - NUMBERS and COST.

Numbers are important, as this is a testament to how well the system was able to scale throughout the entire 6 months that the CRM was in operation.

These numbers, when supported by the COST of running the system over these 6 months, put everything in perspective and show how effective the system has been.