Can ClickUp Be Your CRM?

Customer Relationship Management

A CRM (or customer relationship management) tool is a system for managing relationships with all your existing and potential customers.

An effective CRM helps you secure new business, and retain existing business by promoting healthier communication and assisting you in delivering a higher quality of service.

We work with businesses to either integrate their existing CRM solution with ClickUp or assist them in building a new (bespoke) CRM solution within ClickUp.

This article will focus on the "why", "why not" and "how to", when building a CRM within your ClickUp workspace.

The value proposition of building a CRM within ClickUp is significant.

Examples to consider are:

• The service delivery items (client-facing tasks, billable work) are directly connected to all customer data

• Multiple Departments (e.g. Sales, Legal, Creative, Account Management, Services, Support) can all effectively collaborate

• The scope of client work is effectively understood by all parties

• The profitability and success of client work are effectively understood by all parties

• Businesses reduce annual software fees by consolidating/building multiple solutions into a single platform

Companies sometimes struggle to build a CRM within ClickUp due to:

• Knowledge Limitations

  • Not knowing enough about the feature options or best practices

  • ClickUp's pre-built templates not being a good fit for the company's use case

  • Building an effective CRM within ClickUp can feel overly complicated

• Time Constraints

  • It would take too much time to configure a new solution internally

  • It would take too long to train users on a new system and migrate them to a new way of working

• Feature Limitations

  • ClickUp may not natively provide all of the features required by a company CRM

Demonstrate the Benefit

The video below outlines what a ClickUp CRM looks like!

Explain the Build

Discovery

When building an effective CRM within ClickUp for your business it is important to understand the below.

Why do you want this solution?

For example:

• To facilitate a pre-sales workflow

• To report on customer profitability

• To track customer projects

• To improve inter-departmental communication

• etc.

Who is going to benefit from this solution?

For example:

• Account Managers (when providing project information to customers)

• Sales Reps (when maintaining pipeline data)

• Sales Managers (when reporting on pipeline data)

• Executives (when forecasting potential revenue, and viewing project success)

• Creatives (when understanding the context of their work)

• Service Teams (when onboarding new clients)

• Etc.

What do you need to include in the solution?

Gather requirements from the roles/individuals outlined in the above question.

For example:

• What do account managers need when communicating with clients?

  • Summary of recently completed items

  • Outline of remaining items to complete (timeline)

  • Tool to request information from clients

  • Customer Portal

• What do sales reps need to maintain pipeline data

  • Fields to update

  • Areas to log updates/comments

  • Area to communicate with prospects

  • Method to view upcoming meetings/action items

  • Workflow to progress prospects through

Configuration

Outline how to build the required elements:

• Structure

  • Hierarchy

  • Statuses

  • Fields

• Views

  • Location

  • Types

  • Filters

• Streamlining Workflow

  • Templates

  • Automation

  • Forms?

  • Required Fields?

• Analysing Success

  • Timesheets?

  • Dashboards?

  • Custom Portfolios?

Why Companies Might Not Build a ClickUp CRM

Thanks for reading!

Check out our other blogs and YouTube channel for more videos on how we can help!