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1. What is the need for a SaaS CRM?
2. 10 Best SaaS CRM software tools for tech Start-ups

The Customer Relationship Management market grew over 12.3%. According to the latest statistics – Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce provides the best CRM system and covers 42% of the total CRM market. In the Global Corporate World, there are endless ways of buying, selling and communicating with businessmen or companies. Moreover, with increasing globalization, there are no barriers to step into the market and hence, any market has lots of competitors. So in this competitive world, there has to be certain protocols and strategies on ways to deal with customers.

CRM is the strategy of a corporate firm to communicate and deal with its existing and probable customers. There are no two opinions about the fact that for any businessman or business firm, “Customer is GOD”. This is known and maintained since time immemorial. Thus, it is very important to build good relationships with potential customers in order to maintain the smooth running of the business.

The planned process of CRM analyses data about the customer by – visiting websites, checking the social media, conversing with a lot of communication channels, studying customer’s history, and finally evaluates client’s requirements. The collected data is compiled and those customers who have a high demand for the entrepreneur’s products are sorted out. Finally, the firm communicates with the customers to build up strong business relationships with customers.

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CRM strongly focuses on the retention of customers. Customer retention is very important for good business and it basically means to create a life-long relationship with the customers with whom firms are satisfied. All this is done to increase the growth of the company and establish an important position in the market. CRM software is such a tool that increases, simplifies, consolidates and secures the engagement of a firm with its customers.

SaaS or Software-as-a-Service is“on-demand” software where software is developed and then licensed to companies. Companies subscribe the centrally hosted software and use it. SaaS has IT services that are remotely operated and managed by the SaaS provider and users can access the software through their own browser.

SaaS has different types of uses in different platforms. It can be used by private individuals or by business firms for business purposes. SaaS is a very user-friendly and cost efficient service which is useful for small or medium-sized organizations.

The benefits of SaaS CRM in business are:

1. There is no huge investment so start-ups don’t need to think about huge investments. Hence, it is gaining a huge popularity among small and medium scale business and among start-up companies as they have cash crunches during the onset of their business. It is just the yearly subscription fee which needs to be paid for online CRM solutions.

2. CRM software tools do not have any hardware problems and are totally hassle-free. The users need not install any hardware or set up a server in order to access a CRM tool or the company will not any professional IT expert to maintain the CRM tool used by the company. The CRM tool provider all responsibility for customer service.

3. The SaaS CRM software tool can be modified and customized according to the business need. Most CRMs have customizing features.

4. The data or contacts stored in CRM tools are completely secure if trusted CRMs like the ones mentioned below are used. The SaaS CRM providing company is completely responsible for the security system.  

What is the need for a SaaS CRM?

• CRM will help to make a prediction of the revenue generated by a system. CRM will also give the entrepreneurs an idea of the trends and events in the market that will be helpful to predict revenue and profit statistics. CEO and CFO evaluate these indicators.
• CRM tool helps sales experts to analyze the sales tool and work on improving sales thereby increasing production. It also helps Marketing head make marketing plans by focusing on the marketing tool of CRM.
• CRM helps to acquire the latest information from websites, webinars, seminars, conferences or email campaigns and send them directly to each employee in the Sales department.

**10 Best SaaS CRM software tools for tech Start-ups are: **

**1. **Hubspot CRM

Hubspot CRM has a free version that can be used by SaaS that provides a lot of functions like – planned marketing template, creating company database, scanning of social media, invoice template makers, online library, drag-and-drop communicator facility and many more. Hubspot doesn’t require changing the workforce and working process. The software is suitable for both small and large business firms and it helps in creating detailed company profiles by evaluating all the information of a customer. They are very suitable for start-up firms due to their user-friendly feature. The best feature of the software is that users can connect to phones, emails, websites, social media [connect anywhere the company conducts sales and marketing], and moreover company’s executive team can handle a single dashboard to check the growth of the firm. Hubspot CRM software is very compatible with other good business solutions like Pipedrive, Base CRM, Google Chrome and Google Dynamics, Big-commerce, Dropbox and many more.

Hubspot CRM won the best CRM award from FinancesOnline in the year of 2017 with receiving 99% user satisfaction and 9.8score from FinanceOnline.

2. Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM software is such software which has everything under one roof. It will fulfill all the demands that a CRM software user has. The best feature of this software is – the user company’s executive team can access the software anywhere they want whether it is inside or on the field. Users can have a trail of the total list of customers in a single place to analyze a number of details together. The main features are – partner management, opportunity management, sales data management and forecasting, marketing automation along with a contact manager to assemble the information and assess the leads to make successful deals with customers.  The contact manager module is very useful as it covers all essential customer information like the history of the Customer Company, social status, and reputation in the market [from the social media], communication details. Analysis of these can make or break a deal. Along with this module, the reports and dashboard feature provides aid in collecting detailed reports and data for in-depth analysis. Besides customer management, the field of competition also needs to be kept in mind. Salesforce CEM’s sales collaboration module finds out information about competitors in the market and provides deal tracking facility. It has 4paid versions too which has a lot more useful modules.

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Salesforce has won the Best Overall CRM Software award from Business News Daily, New York in 2018.

3. Zoho CRM

Zoho has a lot of business solutions programs and one of it includes the Zoho CRM software. Zoho CRM software can be used for both large-scale business and small entrepreneurs. The main features of the Zoho CRM include – management of CRM workflow, purchase control, sales force automation, sales pipeline management, management of customer contacts and leads along with account management. The software has an Opportunity Tracking module which not only informs about the position of the customer in the buying cycle but also updates about deal history, deals size and the profile of the competitor. This information could be used in suitable ways to grab customers and finalize deals with them.

With the help of the app users get crucial leads about company officials visiting websites and receive an outlook about customers from events like trade fairs, seminars, and emails. The software has modules for routine business task automation, analyze customers on multiple domains and track the sales of the company. The social media prominence of the user company can be increased using the software to get contacts and leads from the company’s social sites. There are no free versions of this software and prices start from $12 per user per month.

**4. **Pipedrive

Piprdrive’s main attraction is that it is available in 13languages; moreover, it comes with a range of major and minor currency supporting facility. Therefore, this CRM tool is very useful for firms dealing in International business. Pipedrive has been accredited with the easiest sales tool to implement title by G2Crowd. The reason is that the software has no two-day training program or a long list of functions, unlike other CRM tools. The main features of the software are – collecting contact history, assimilating emails, sales reporting, data import, and export.

The leads you receive are organized in a way that the user will be able to use the software to effectively manage the company’s sales processes. Pipedrive can blend smoothly with Dropbox, Zoho CRM, Zaiper and many more, using the open API feature. Even the software gives users the liberty to switch modules on and off according to the user’s need and this doesn’t affect the quality of service at all. It is one of the best SaaS CRM tools because of it’s easy to use structure.The tool is customizable, visual and intuitive. The CRM tool comes with a 30-day trial version and then pricing starts from $10 per user per month, billed annually.

5. SugarCRM

SugarCRM is very user-friendly for small business or start-up entrepreneurs. It doesn’t have any complicated and elaborate pricing framework along with a lot of add-ons; rather makers of this software have made it as easy as possible to understand. Users who don’t want to spend a lot of time on customization should go for SugarCRM. Even then it has endless customization options.

It provides one of the best customer services among all the picked up CRM tools and is best suited for start-up developers. The Business News Daily awarded SugarCRM the Best CRM software for Start-up in May 2018.

**6. **Freshsales

This advanced CRM software tool not only provides normal CRM modules but also unique features like auto-dialers, call recording, call routing, and affiliate management. The tool uses a number of communication channels to import leads as well as authenticate, distribute and develop them. The main advantage of freshsales is that it can be used to control more than thousands of leads using a single contact management system.

In this CRM tool, previous events can be easily tracked so that they can be utilized to plan future deals. Besides this great feature sales personnel can detect whether emails have been read or simply ignored. So users get a clear picture of the sales process at different stages and they can plan the future steps accordingly.  The software provides 24*7 customer care service over the phone or live chats. FinanceOnline awarded Freshsales with the Great User Experience 2017 Award.

7. Nutshell CRM

The user-friendly software tool has a very easy implementation and installation process that requires no expert advice. The feature that users will cherish is the eye-catching and easy to use dashboard that will notify users about upcoming meetings, company activities and tasks along with a detailed contact history. Executives using the software can very easily bring in contact information [name along with latest emails and discussions] from the Google accounts and from MS-Excel spreadsheet. A sales process that can be easily customized and a collaborative environment of the software are the features to focus on.

**8. **Insightly

The CRM tool is very suitable for SaaS and tech start-ups as the company’s team will have a hassle-free and fast session while using this CRM tool. Its advanced but easy-to-use features, fast-loading design, intuitive menus will be a huge advantage to users. It has webforms on the websites of the user to capture leads, pre-written email templates, send reports that oversee progress. It also offers email support for the paid customers. The Insightly has different editions for different types of business like – free edition, edition for professional and enterprise.

9. Nimble

Nimble users need not look for different customer relationship solutions since this single software tool will help them to handle contacts, find new contacts and develop them effectively. This will be used for productive communication with customers. Therefore it is best suited for tech start-ups as they will have very less difficulty inusing this CRM tool. The software is so efficient that it will collect all the information about the user’s business contacts from different social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This information will be integrated with the communications, calendar, and partnerships into a single user-friendly format. Nimble has done a lot of things to help tech and SaaS start-ups like they have a live help desk that includes a team of developers who provide extra guidance and support to users and also boasts of several high-level support mechanisms. The tool has one of the best support systems so that the team can help users whenever they are stuck into a problem which in turn helps in maintaining a smooth workflow.

10. Highrise CRM

The most attractive part of Highrise CRM is that it developers have provided different tiers of services to be used for different sizes of business. The different modules and features of the software can be used to execute the most tedious sales tasks very effectively. The interconnected notes system built-in the software helps users to insert notes or contact information and even view notes anytime and anywhere, aided by colleagues. Sales based organizations should make the use of this CRM software tool. It is well known in the market that sales platform needs to deal with a lot of customers and clients on daily basis so there might be some important communications lost or some prospects missed. But this software comes with the feature to maintain all the client or customer details [call recordings, emails, and customer history] on a single page. This facility helps to evaluate – which clients have been with communicated or who has communicated with them or find out clients that need to be contacted. Thus it is a very powerful tool for Customer Relationships management for any level or size of business.

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Conclusion

After knowing about all the above CRMs it can be easily concluded that all the above CRMs are user-friendly and mostly aim at the development of business by predicting sales, production and keeping a detailed track of customers and clients. And all of these are also best suited for SaaS and business start-ups. They perfectly cater to the needs of the small tech start-up firms thereby helping the firms to build and maintain a very healthy customer-company relationship. That is the aim of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.

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