Every project management team needs critical customer information and collaboration from other departments to be successful. But getting the relevant departments to play ball is sometimes easier said than done. Using a CRM in project management could be the answer you need for ultimate interdepartmental cohesion.
Bringing sales, marketing, customer success, and project management teams together with a solid CRM software integration improves company-wide success and growth. How? Keep reading to learn more about CRM project management and what it can do for your team’s productivity. And if you’re looking for a way to get started quickly, consider using a project management template to structure your projects effectively.
The customer relationship management (CRM) software meaning in project management is that it makes it easier for sales, marketing, and customer success teams to gather and extract customer data. These systems help teams understand their customers better and deliver enhanced experiences throughout the customer journey.
However, your project management team needs the same data, which means that all teams must communicate with each other to accomplish their respective tasks and goals. Running these departments on separate software systems can create confusion and inconsistencies from one department to the next.
That’s why using your CRM for project management is beneficial. It involves integrating your project management and CRM software solutions to bring teams together and combat departmental silos.
While some CRMs offer workflow automation and other helpful tools, you can also integrate your existing project management software with the CRM for a holistic solution.
Bringing critical data and processes together improves information sharing and collaboration across departments. It fosters a powerful synergy between your sales, marketing, customer success, and project management teams, leading to greater customer satisfaction.
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Merging your CRM and project management software gives your team all the tools to nurture and support customers before and after their first purchase. But it’s still important to understand the difference between the two and their functions.
Let’s look at the main differences between project management software and CRM software.
Customer relationship management software
The following elements are specific to a company’s CRM software:
Core attributes: Reputable CRM software will include features for building pipelines, adding and automating tasks, scheduling meetings and calls, and communicating with customers and team members.
Primary applications: CRMs typically help teams manage and engage with leads and contacts, supporting strategies like prospecting, lead tracking, and email marketing.
Key objectives: The main goal of CRM software is to help your team find and secure leads, develop better customer relationships, and deliver efficient customer support.
Core attributes: Most project management apps include key features for assigning and tracking tasks, monitoring project timelines, managing deadlines, overseeing budgets, and automating workflows.
Primary applications: Project management software is for project and task management related to project plans, budgets, stock, deadlines, and team members.
Key objectives: Your project management software should promote planning to achieve project goals, completion of projects on time and within budget, team communication, and customer satisfaction.
Can you use your CRM system for project management?
The short answer is yes—Integrating a CRM with project management software can definitely benefit your business.
A good CRM app can be a potent, stand-alone solution to support your sales, marketing, and customer success teams. With it, your teams can use valuable insights into customer behavior and leverage automation features to convert leads into customers.
However, your project management team comes into the mix once the lead becomes a customer, and the goal shifts to customer retention. Despite this, understanding your customer’s wants and needs and how they engage with your product or service is still vital.
Your project management CRM continues to be the source of information crucial to meeting your customers’ needs at any stage of their lifecycle.
The project management team needs this information to deliver on their promises and impress customers. This data makes your CRM a critical part of all facets of your business, including project management. Let’s explore the advantages and challenges of combining your project management and CRM software:
Advantages
Centralized data hub: Keep all your customer and project data in one place, making it easy for teams to find, edit, and access information. This single source of truth empowers better decision-making.
Enhanced team collaboration: A unified CRM project management system ensures project, marketing, sales, and customer service teams stay aligned and work together effectively.
Streamlined customer journey: Transform leads into customers seamlessly, with all teams accessing the same customer information and project status updates.
Smarter resource management: Using one system instead of two reduces training time, cuts costs, and increases overall efficiency across your organization.
Real-time feedback loop: Capture and share customer feedback instantly across teams, leading to faster improvements in products and services.
Simplified workflows: Consolidate processes naturally, reducing complexity and boosting productivity across departments.
Better customer experience: Access comprehensive customer information easily, enabling more personalized service and stronger customer relationships.
Challenges
Different core functions: While CRM focuses on managing customer relationships over time, project management handles specific, time-bound initiatives. These distinct purposes can sometimes clash.
Timeline complexities: Balancing long-term customer relationships with fixed-duration projects can create organizational challenges in a combined system.
Combining your CRM and project management software gives your team access to the information and support they need to ensure positive customer experiences. It also encourages collaboration across departments, providing a smooth onboarding process for the customer.
The benefits of using a CRM in project management
Using multiple apps and software to run a business seems to be the norm. But that’s how departmental silos and inaccuracies occur. Here are some of the benefits associated with deploying a CRM in project management:
Improved data cohesion: With all your information on the same system, teams from across your organization can access and share accurate information in a flash.
Increased quality: Teams responsible for different aspects of the customer experience, like product development, will have access to vital feedback that can help with product and service improvements.
Enhanced efficiency: Bringing everything together into one system will make cross-department communication more time-efficient and should help you save on software costs.
Better organization: Instead of saving mission-critical information in different places, which leads to duplicates and inaccuracies, everyone shares the same information managed and stored in one place.
Elevated customer experiences: With improved collaboration and access to quality information, rallying the right team members to address queries and manage expectations is easier.
Streamlined onboarding: With your combined CRM and project management solutions, teams can facilitate a smooth transition from lead to customer.
A project management template is a pre-designed framework that outlines the key elements of a project, such as tasks, timelines, resources, and milestones. It provides a standardized structure to help project managers plan, execute, and track projects efficiently.
Project management templates are used by project managers, team leaders, and anyone involved in planning and executing projects. They are valuable tools for both experienced project managers and those new to project management, helping to streamline processes and improve project outcomes.
When do I use the project management template?
You can use a project management template at the beginning of a new project to quickly establish a clear plan and timeline. It’s particularly useful when managing similar projects repeatedly, as it ensures consistency and saves time on planning.
Choosing the right project management template
To streamline your project management process within a CRM, consider using a project management template. A well-designed template provides a standardized framework for managing tasks, timelines, and resources, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all projects. When selecting a project management template, consider the following:
Ease of use: Choose a template that is intuitive and easy to understand, even for team members who are not experienced project managers.
Customization options: Look for a template that can be easily customized to fit the specific needs of your business and projects.
Integration with your CRM: Ensure that the template can be seamlessly integrated with your CRM system to facilitate data sharing and collaboration.
Reporting capabilities: Select a template that provides robust reporting features to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and measure success.
There are many free project management apps and templates available online, so take the time to explore your options and find one that meets your specific requirements.
6 CRM solutions with project management functionality
If you’re a small to medium-sized business seeking a cost-effective solution, a CRM with integrated project management is worth considering. To help you explore your options, we’ve compiled a list of tools that offer both.
Nutshell: Nutshell is an all-in-one, user-friendly growth platform designed to help small and medium-sized businesses thrive. Its intuitive interface makes it easy for teams to adopt, even without extensive technical expertise. Nutshell streamlines collaboration between marketing and sales teams, enabling them to close deals faster and more efficiently.
HubSpot CRM: A cloud-based CRM with tools to capture and convert leads, manage customer engagement, automate processes, and facilitate sales. It also includes content creation tools to support your inbound marketing efforts.
Zoho CRM: This web-based CRM platform helps streamline sales, marketing, customer service, and inventory management. It’s part of a broad suite of business applications, providing a comprehensive solution for various business needs.
Insightly: A cloud-based CRM and pipeline management tool that streamlines pipelines, tasks, and workflows. It offers charts and customizable dashboards for enhanced visibility and control.
Monday.com: This online collaboration and work-management app functions as both a project management tool and a CRM, offering a versatile solution for managing projects and customer relationships.
ClickUp: This online collaboration and project management tool also facilitates CRM and automated workflows, offering a flexible solution for managing projects and customer interactions.
These tools offer a range of features that can help you effectively manage both your customer relationships and your projects, making them valuable assets for any business looking to streamline its operations.
Is Nutshell a perfect match for your favorite software?
Nutshell integrates with tons of software, both natively and through Zapier. See if your favorites are on the list.
For the best CRM and project management merger, you need software that’s customizable, agile, easy to use, and packed with valuable features and tools.
Essential CRM project management tools
When on the hunt for a CRM that fits the CRM project management bill, look for a solution that offers the following essential tools and features:
App integration options: A CRM with multiple integration options easily incorporates your project management software.
Team collaboration: If the CRM simplifies and records team and interdepartmental communication and information sharing, you may have a winner.
Task management: Your integrated CRM and project management software should allow teams to manage and automate tasks across departments.
Activity scheduling: Scheduling meetings and calls with customers and team members through your new CRM should be hassle-free.
Notifications and alerts: Choose a CRM that notifies teams about tasks, projects, and customer updates and alerts you of vital communications and deadlines.
Lead generation tools: Look for a project management CRM with tools to help you generate new leads through landing pages, social media, email, and other channels.
Pipeline management: Make sure you can build custom pipelines and track leads, goals, and tasks related to each pipeline stage.
Workflow automation: Your CRM should let you set up workflow automations, saving time and making project tracking tasks and activities easier.
Reporting and analytics: Your CRM should deliver detailed reports and metrics useful to all departments, including sales figures, other conversion numbers, customer behavior metrics, and email open rates.
Marketing tools: A CRM with notable marketing tools, like creating lead-generating landing pages and sending newsletters and broadcasts, is necessary.
Email synchronization: Ensure the CRM offers email and calendar synchronization so all your communication and appointments live in your CRM app.
Artificial intelligence: Choose a CRM solution that offers the many benefits of AI, including meeting transcription, voice-to-text note-taking, email writing assistance, and customer communication timeline summarization.
Other important CRM project management software features
Although the tools and features directly related to workflow and tasks are crucial, a few other features make the overall CRM project management experience more manageable. These include:
Adaptable solution: Whether you’re a small, medium, or large business, your CRM project management solution should let you tailor elements to your needs and scale as your business grows.
Positive user experience: Software that’s easy to set up and use goes a long way to favorable team adoption and experiences.
Mobile app access: Choose a CRM with mobile app access to ensure your team stays on top of deals and projects while on the go.
Secure system: Prevent your customer and project data from falling into the wrong hands with software that offers advanced encryption and data protection.
Responsive customer support: Make sure your CRM offers prompt, reliable, and knowledgeable customer support to overcome issues seamlessly.
Factors to consider when shifting to CRM project management
A few things to consider when moving from a stand-alone project management approach to an integrated CRM project management system. To ensure you select a system that aligns with your business, ask yourself the following questions.
How many team members should I cater to?
Knowing the size of your team will help with a few central decisions when choosing and implementing your CRM project management software. The number of team members could influence your software package size and budget, which may dictate the features included.
How easy will it be to onboard the team?
Consider that your team will experience a transition period and require training. To reduce the risk of downtime and issues, formulate a plan for onboarding teams systematically.
Integrating that software with a CRM may be reasonably quick if your project management team is already familiar with project management software. But it’s best to allow the team time to get used to the new system and gain some experience.
What features does my team need from a project management CRM?
The features you need may come down to the nature of your business and how your teams function. Consider the features that will improve your current processes and those that may help you incorporate new ones to boost your productivity.
Separate the essential features from those that are nice to have and consult your budget to find the best fit for your business and team.
CRM project management FAQs
Let’s examine a few frequently asked questions and answers related to CRM software and its project management features.
How will a CRM help with project management?
Your CRM system gives you access to essential customer data that provides invaluable insights and context to help you build stronger customer relationships.
For example, you can pull data like customer contact information, past purchases, important notes, and meeting, call, and email records. These ensure your project management and execution teams have everything they need to deliver the best possible service throughout the project.
Is a CRM with project management capabilities essential?
Having your CRM and project management tools in one system streamlines several processes and improves collaboration across your sales, marketing, customer support, and project management teams. With enhanced communication and information-sharing across departments, you pave the way for positive customer experiences with each project.
What should you consider when switching to CRM project management software?
When switching to CRM project management software, consider your team size, ease of onboarding, and essential features. Prioritize automation, reporting capabilities, and customization options like integrations and custom labels. This ensures the tool fits your team’s unique needs and enhances productivity.
Which CRM is the best for project management?
While several CRM systems are available, Nutshell offers an advanced solution with comprehensive features and integration capabilities. With Nutshell, you’ll have a best-in-class CRM system coupled with everything you need to execute exceptional projects.
How Nutshell makes CRM in project management easy
Nutshell is the all-in-one CRM trusted by 30,000+ professionals and is ideal for your company’s CRM project management needs. Opting for Nutshell as your project management CRM gives you access to numerous customizable features, including:
Choosing Nutshell is as easy as signing up for our 14-day trial, which gives you access to the full Nutshell app—no credit card required. Give it a try and discover how Nutshell can elevate your CRM project management system.
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