It’s a given: You would never build your own CRM.
Why?
This much is obvious: choosing a SaaS product like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics allows you to leverage the enormous investments these companies have made into R&D, design and optimization without the large initial investment. These subscription services are comparable to buying a movie ticket. A nominal fee gets you in the theater to enjoy a movie that cost millions to make.
For the vast majority of companies, when it comes to implementing a CRM in their business, the smart thing to do is buy an existing platform. So why consider building the portal that integrates with it? Many companies embark on a "build vs. buy" analysis but the same logic holds for implementing a portal to integrate with your CRM. The numbers speak for themselves, and the difference is exponential.
Consider this analogy: If you were deciding whether to buy running shoes or build your own pair, you could probably cobble something together that would fit your foot. But compared to what you'd get from a retailer, it would take inordinately longer, be vastly more expensive, and is likely to leave you with blisters.
Let's look at some costs.
If you have an IT department, you know good people are expensive. Let's be conservative and assume your portal will take no more than 4% (roughly 2 weeks/year) of your team's time to develop and implement. What would that cost you?
No doubt it’s a significant sum. But for the sake of this comparison, let’s assume your IT department consists entirely of volunteers so your labor costs are zero. Go ahead - please indulge in this fantasy for a moment: having your own team develop, customize, maintain, and support your portal for absolutely nothing.
Back on earth…
You need infrastructure. You need servers. You need state of the art security, backup, integrations and licensing. What will this cost you?
As with our running shoe comparison above: you might be able to make your own portal, but it’s unlikely to be as effective or refined as one created, maintained, and constantly improved by a company that exists solely for the purpose of portal implementation and innovation. Still not convinced? You don’t have to take our word for it.
According to a study conducted by an independent software consulting firm* (in Finland, no less!)
- The average cost of developing and implementing an intranet was around $71,000 USD (remember: no licences, servers or cloud services included).
- The average estimate workload of building an intranet was 92 full-time work days (that's about 3 months straight in a vacuum for those keeping track).
- The average rate for developer contractors was roughly $103.00 USD/hr.
- The kicker - The estimated workload for the manager/coordinator is at least the same as the development team
CRMs, shoes and portals’ common factor: They're best left to educated, invested, experienced, specialists.
Magentrix Partner, Customer, and Employee Communities can be up and running in as little as a week. Our collaboration solutions are proven to drastically reduce support costs, increase internal efficiency and synchronize seamlessly with your existing CRM. Improve your customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing emails and phone calls with a complete self-service portal solution.
