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A bespoke CRM built around your own sales process

A CRM that follows deals the way you actually sell: enquiries, design studies, costings, quotes read from your ERP. The code sits in a repository in your name, and there is no licence per user. Distributor access and the installed base are optional modules.

Updated

From

£10,500 ex VAT

Timeline
8 to 12 weeks
Pricing
Fixed price per stage
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A sample screen, for illustration. The companies and data are made up.
CRMWebsiteQuotesFollow-upsCRMWebsiteQuotesFollow-ups

You need this if

  • Your deals run for months, with design work and trials, and your CRM only knows ‘lead, quote, won’.
  • Sales staff keep their own spreadsheet because the CRM in place cannot follow costings.
  • You sell through distributors and cannot see which deals they are working on.
  • The installed base (machines, serial numbers, contracts) lives in a separate file, far from the opportunities.
  • Quotes are raised in the ERP or in Excel, and nothing ties a quote to the deal it belongs to.

What the CRM includes

  • Accounts, sites and contacts

    Group, subsidiary, plant: the real structure of your customers, with each contact’s role (buyer, design engineer, specifier).

  • Deals and stages

    Your own stages: enquiry, design study, costing, trial, negotiation. Values, expected dates and an order forecast by month.

  • Quotes tied to deals

    Quotes from the ERP appear in the deal, revision after revision, each with its follow-up date.

  • Optional

    Distributors and agents

    Each distributor registers and follows its own deals through restricted access. Incoming enquiries go to the right territory.

  • Optional

    Installed base

    Machines, serial numbers, commissioning and warranty end dates, contracts. Service and spare-parts sales start from here.

  • Connections and migration

    Customers and quotes read from the ERP; website forms; data brought over from your spreadsheets or your old CRM.

Example: a special-purpose machine, from enquiry to commissioning

A typical flow with the installed base module, by way of illustration. The company and the data are fictional.

  1. 1

    An enquiry comes in through the website form: the CRM opens the deal and attaches it to the account and site already on file.

  2. 2

    The salesperson qualifies it, then calls in the design office, which attaches its study and costing to the deal.

  3. 3

    Three revisions of the quote follow; each stays tied to the deal, with its value and follow-up date.

  4. 4

    The customer signs: the deal moves to ‘won’ and the sales order is created in the ERP.

  5. 5

    At commissioning, the machine joins the installed base with its serial number and warranty end date.

How the project runs

  1. Audit

    We trace three recent deals, won and lost, and note where the information sits today.

    1 to 2 weeks

  2. Specification

    Sales stages, account model, mock-ups, data flows with the ERP. The firm price is fixed.

    1 to 2 weeks

  3. Build

    A delivery every two weeks. Two salespeople run their real deals in the test version.

    5 to 7 weeks

  4. Launch

    Data migration, training for sales and the sales office, go-live. One month of fixes against the specification is included.

    1 week, then a month of fixes

Durations to scale, using the longest stated

What the price covers

The starting price is for a CRM with accounts, contacts, deals, quotes read from the ERP and dashboards, with your data migrated. It includes the specification; the audit is priced separately. The final price is fixed after the specification, before the build.

Estimate my projectSee pricing

CRM: accounts, deals, quotes, dashboards
from £10,500 ex VAT
Optional Distributors and agents module
from £3,500 ex VAT
Optional Installed base module
from £3,500 ex VAT
Audit and roadmap, deducted from the first project we build for you
£1,650 ex VAT
Maintenance
from £390 ex VAT a month

Payment, for each stage

30%
on order
70%
on accepted delivery

Standard CRM, configured standard CRM or custom CRM

Three ways to equip a sales team, from cheapest to closest fit. None is right for everyone.

CriterionStandard CRMConfigured standard CRMBespoke CRM
What it isHubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho or Sellsy, used as it comes.The same tool, set up for your stages and wired to the website and the ERP.A tool built for your sales process.
CostA subscription per user, every month.The subscription plus the set-up: from £3,900 ex VAT.From £10,500 ex VAT, then maintenance. No licence per user.
TimeA few days.3 to 6 weeks.8 to 12 weeks.
Fits ifDirect sales, a short cycle, a small team.Your process fits the tool’s model, give or take a few fields.Long deals, distributors, an installed base, quotes tied to the ERP.
LimitDouble entry with the ERP, generic stages.The price climbs with users and add-ons; you depend on the vendor.A cost up front; no built-in marketing tools.

When a standard CRM is the better choice

Whenever one of the four cases below is yours. In 2025 only a quarter of small enterprises in the EU (10 to 49 people) used any CRM, against 65% of large ones (Eurostat, 2026). For many SMEs the first step is to have one at all, not to have one built.

  • You have never had a CRM. Use a standard one for a year. You will find out what you really miss, and that is the best brief you could write.
  • You sell direct, on a short cycle. Enquiry, quote, order: every CRM on the market handles that.
  • You need marketing. Email campaigns, follow-up sequences, visitor tracking: the vendors are years ahead on these.
  • Your sales team is small. With a handful of users, subscriptions will cost less than a build for a long time.
In these cases the right project is a standard CRM implementation, wired to your website and ERP. We do that too, and the audit settles which of the two you need.

What a standard CRM handles badly in manufacturing

A custom CRM is worth it when the way you sell does not fit the ‘one contact, one opportunity, one value’ model.

Your situationIn a standard CRMIn a bespoke CRM
A twelve-month deal with a design study, a trial and several decision-makers.Renamed stages, but no study or costing attached.Each stage has its documents, its people and its dates.
Sales through distributors and agents.Depending on the tool, partner access as an add-on, or none.Each distributor registers and follows its deals; to go further, a portal.
A base of installed machines.Extra fields on the customer record.A record per machine, tied to deals, service and parts.
Quotes raised in the ERP.The value typed in again, often out of date.The ERP quote appears in the deal, revision after revision.

What drives the cost of a bespoke CRM

  • The links to the ERP. Reading customers and quotes is simple. Creating a sales order from a won deal needs more checks.
  • Data migration. Ten years of customer records spread across the ERP, spreadsheets and inboxes: de-duplication takes time, and adoption depends on it.
  • The modules. Distributors, installed base, service: each is priced separately and can wait for a second phase.
  • Permissions. Who sees which deals: by territory, by branch, by distributor.
  • Quote preparation. If the costing itself needs to go faster, that is a quote automation added to the CRM.

A bespoke CRM is business software like any other: the code is in a repository opened in your name, the data on hosting in the European Union in your name, and the number of users does not change the price.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a bespoke CRM cost?

From £10,500 ex VAT for accounts, deals, quotes read from the ERP and dashboards. The distributor and installed base modules start at £3,500 ex VAT each. There is no licence per user.

How long does the project take?

Allow 8 to 12 weeks from the start of the audit to go-live. Two salespeople use the test version from the first deliveries.

Does the CRM connect to our ERP?

Yes, through an API, file exchange or a connector: Sage 200, Access Dimensions, Pegasus Opera, Odoo, SAP Business One or an in-house system. The ERP stays the reference for invoiced customers, quotes and sales orders.

Can you bring over data from our current CRM or spreadsheets?

Yes. Accounts, contacts, open deals and history are migrated after de-duplication. We show you the result on a sample before go-live.

Why not adapt HubSpot or another off-the-shelf CRM?

Often that is the right answer, and we do it: see CRM implementation. Bespoke is worth it when long deals, distributors or an installed base mean bending the standard tool until it is painful to use.

What if the sales team does not use it?

That is the main risk with any CRM. We reduce it by having two salespeople try each delivery on their real deals, and by removing any data entry the ERP or the website can supply.

Read next

Start with a fixed-price audit

In one to two weeks you know what to build, in what order and in what price range. The audit fee is deducted from the first project we build for you.

£1,650 ex VAT 1 to 2 weeks See a sample report

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