CRM development company · CRM & ERP systems
Bespoke CRM, built round your process instead of the other way about.
Every established business already has a system of record. Usually it is a CRM that nearly fits, a spreadsheet nobody will admit owning, and one person who knows where everything really is.
Werehouse Media is a UK CRM development company, based in Sussex, building bespoke CRM and ERP systems for businesses whose work does not fit an off-the-shelf product. A bespoke CRM is a system built around how one business actually works: its own records, its own stages, its own words for them. An ERP is the same idea carried further, joining the operational side of the business as well, so stock, orders, purchasing, production and fulfilment sit in one place rather than in four tools that each know a quarter of the story.
Work starts with a process audit, normally £495 and free for a limited time, which establishes what should be built and, just as often, what should not. A CRM or ERP build is quoted after that audit instead of from a list price, because the record types, the people using it and the systems it has to speak to decide the cost, and none of them can be seen from a phone call. Our guide to what bespoke software costs in the UK gives the typical bands.
The quote is a fixed price in writing before any work starts. The system runs on accounts you own, the data is yours and exportable at any time, and the code and documentation are handed over at the end, so nothing is locked to the people who built it.
The difference
Custom CRM development, ERP, or the thing that sits between them.
A CRM is usually one part of a larger picture rather than the whole of it. Where the enquiries feeding it, the portal your customers log into and the chasing between them are all in scope, the shape of that whole build is described on business systems. And if the real trouble is that too few enquiries arrive to need a system at all, the fix sits further up the chain, in local SEO services and a website built to bring enquiries in.
CRM and ERP get used loosely, and the distinction matters because it decides what the build costs. A CRM holds the people and the work: enquiries, quotes, jobs, renewals, whatever your pipeline is actually called. An ERP holds the operation: stock, purchase orders, production, despatch, and the numbers that fall out of them. Most businesses need a strong CRM and two or three ERP-shaped pieces bolted to it, not a full ERP. Saying so early usually keeps the build a good deal smaller than the category name suggests.
A CRM, when the work is the bottleneck
Enquiries arriving faster than anyone can chase them, quotes going cold because nobody knows which ones are still live, jobs tracked in a calendar and a WhatsApp thread. The fix is a system that models your stages, not a generic sales pipeline borrowed from software sold to sales teams.
An ERP, when the stock is the bottleneck
Orders, stock and purchasing living in separate places, so the shop sells something the warehouse does not have, and reconciling it is somebody's Monday. The fix joins the operational records so one movement updates everything that depends on it.
Usually, one of each
A CRM with the two or three operational pieces the business genuinely runs on. For most businesses that is the right shape, and it is one reason these builds are quoted individually: what you need, decided honestly, is cheaper than what a category name implies.
The honest answer first
Often you should buy the product instead.
There is a good deal of software in the world and some of it is excellent. If an off-the-shelf CRM covers what you need at £40 a seat, building one is a bad use of your money and we will say so in the audit rather than after it. The audit is normally £495 and free for a limited time. It can still conclude "do not build this". Our guide to the best CRM for a UK small business compares what the popular products cost.
Buy it, if your process is ordinary
A pipeline that looks like everyone else's pipeline is well served by a product that has had ten years and a hundred engineers spent on it. We will set it up and integrate it, and that is a smaller invoice than a build.
Build it, if the process is the business
When the way you work is the reason clients choose you, bending it to fit a product costs you the thing you are actually selling. That is the case worth building for, and it is the one where seat licences stop being the cheaper option somewhere around the fifth user.
Build it, if you are paying for four tools that do not speak
At some headcount the licence stack plus the retyping between them costs more per year than a system that does the job once. We will do that arithmetic with you in the audit, with your real numbers.
The short definitions
What a CRM is, what an ERP is, and which one you need.
What is a CRM?
A CRM, or customer relationship management system, is the single place a business keeps its people and its work: enquiries, contacts, quotes, jobs, renewals and the history attached to each. A bespoke CRM is one built around a particular business's own stages and records rather than a product the business has to reshape itself to fit.
What is an ERP?
An ERP, or enterprise resource planning system, is the same idea extended to the operational side: stock, purchasing, production, despatch and the numbers that fall out of them. Where a CRM tracks the relationship, an ERP tracks the resources used to deliver it.
What is the difference between a CRM and an ERP?
A CRM faces outward at customers and revenue; an ERP faces inward at operations and cost. Most established businesses need a strong CRM plus two or three ERP-shaped pieces, not a full ERP, and saying so early is what stops a CRM project turning into an ERP project.
When does a business need a CRM?
When the work is the bottleneck. Enquiries arriving faster than anyone can chase them, quotes going cold because nobody knows which are still live, jobs tracked across a calendar and a WhatsApp thread. Typically somewhere between three and five people needing the same answer at the same time.
When does a business need an ERP?
When the stock is the bottleneck. Orders, inventory and purchasing living in separate places, so the shop sells what the shelf does not have and reconciling it is somebody's Monday morning. Also when a second site, a second currency or an audit trail enters the picture.
Can a CRM or ERP be customised?
An off-the-shelf product can be configured, within the limits its vendor allows. Custom CRM development goes further: the data model, the stages and the interface are designed around how the business actually works, so there is nothing to work around. That is the difference between configuring software and having software built.
Can it integrate with the systems we already have?
Yes, and that is usually most of the value. Accounting, email, calendars, a shop, a phone system: anything with an API can be joined, and quite a lot without one can be too. Where a tool is genuinely closed we say so before the build rather than during it. See API and systems integration.
How much manual work does a bespoke CRM actually remove?
The honest answer is that it removes retyping and chasing, not judgement. In practice that is the enquiry becoming a record without anyone reading an email, the quote following itself up, the won job becoming an invoice once, and the weekly report assembling itself. What it does not remove is deciding which jobs are worth quoting for.
What a build includes
What you get when a CRM is built for you.
A bespoke CRM build from Werehouse Media includes the data model, the interface, roles and permissions, reporting, the integrations it needs, the move of your existing records, written documentation, and the handover of the code and accounts. None of it is an optional extra bolted on at the end. A CRM missing any one of those pieces tends to end up back in a spreadsheet.
Your records, your stages
A data model built from what your business actually tracks, whether that is sites, orders, cases or members, with your own names for each stage instead of a sales pipeline borrowed from another industry.
Roles, permissions and history
Who can see and change what, set per role, with a record of who changed which field and when. Retention rules, and a clean export of one person's records for a subject access request, where your data needs them.
Reporting built in
The figures you check every week, each defined once and built into the system, so the Monday report assembles itself.
Integrations that fail safely
Accounts, email, calendars, a shop or a phone system, joined through their APIs. What happens when one of them is down gets decided before launch, not discovered after it.
Existing data, moved and checked
Spreadsheets and old exports mapped onto the new model, cleared of duplicates, and checked against the originals before anyone starts working in it.
Documentation and handover
A written runbook, the source code, and every account set up in your name from day one, so another developer could pick it up tomorrow.
From audit to launch
How a CRM build runs, stage by stage.
A bespoke CRM build runs in six stages, from the systems audit to handover. Each stage produces something written you can check, and because the system is released in stages, you can stop after any of them and still own something that works.
- 1A systems auditWe follow one real case from the moment it arrives to the moment it is invoiced, then write down what should be built, what should be bought and what should be left alone. Normally £495, free for a limited time.
- 2A fixed quoteScope, stages, what you need to provide, and the price, in writing before anything is built. A change gets its own price and your agreement before the work happens.
- 3The data model, agreed firstRecords, stages and reports are agreed with the people who will use them before the screens are built, while changing them is still cheap.
- 4Built and released in stagesThe stage that pays back fastest goes live first, and each one is live before the next starts.
- 5Migration and testing on real recordsYour existing records are moved across and the system is tested on them, awkward ones included, then signed off against a written test list.
- 6Handover, then optional aftercareThe code, the accounts and a written runbook are handed over. Monitoring and changes are available from £49 a month with no contract.
Prices
Quoted after the audit, fixed before the build.
We quote each CRM and ERP build individually, after the systems audit, instead of publishing a starting price. The cost depends on how many record types the system holds, how many people use it and with what permissions, how much data has to move across and in what state, and how many other systems it has to speak to. The audit measures each of those. The quote that follows is a fixed price in writing, broken into stages, and it only moves if you ask for something outside the scope.
| Process audit | Normally £495, free for a limited time. A written assessment of how the work runs now, what should be built, what should be bought off the shelf and what should be left alone. |
|---|---|
| Connected system | From £1,950. Joining two or three tools you already pay for so they stop needing a human between them. See automation integration. |
| Bespoke CRM system | Quoted after the audit. Its own data model, its own interface, its own stages. Roles and permissions, reporting, and the integrations it needs to be the single place the work lives. Where the reporting has to pull from more than this one system, that is data and analytics work. |
| CRM with operational modules | Quoted after the audit. The above plus the ERP-shaped pieces: stock, purchasing, despatch or production, joined so one movement updates everything downstream. |
| Multi-module or regulated | Quoted after the audit. Multi-site, multi-currency, audit trails, retention rules, or an integration surface that has to be right rather than merely working. |
| Aftercare | From £49 a month, no contract. Hosting, backups, monitoring and changes. See care plans. |
Portals, dashboards and internal tools that sit beside a CRM have published starting prices on the bespoke software page.
The data comes first
A CRM is only as good as the records you move into it.
Every CRM build starts with data that already exists somewhere: a customer spreadsheet, an old CRM export, the accounts package, a shared inbox. Three questions need answering before the new system is designed. Where does the data live now, and which copy is right? What has to migrate, and in what state, given that duplicates carried into a new CRM tend to stay there? And what reporting must the system produce? The reports decide which fields and stages the data model needs, and week one is when those are cheap to get right.
Where it lives
Every system and spreadsheet holding customer or job records, who keeps each one up to date, and which one people believe when two of them disagree.
What has to migrate
How many records, how many duplicates, what is missing, and which history is worth carrying across. That sets the size of the migration inside the build.
What it must report
The figures people check and the decisions they make with them, each defined once, so the CRM is built to produce them rather than having them added later.
The data audit answers all three in a written report with a fixed quote. It is £495, and when an audit is paid for, the fee is credited in full against builds totalling over £2,000. It sits alongside the free systems audit: that one decides whether a CRM should be built at all, and this one makes sure the data is ready for it.
The reference
The first business we did this for was our own.
We ran an e-commerce brand of our own, a sustainable kitchenware label selling into Oceania, and for about two years we built and ran the systems behind it: a bespoke CRM modelled on its own orders rather than a generic sales pipeline, automated enquiry and email handling, and an order flow that ran from payment through picking and shipping to the review request without anyone retyping anything. That is not a case study we were handed. It is the reason we know what the second year of owning one of these costs, and what it feels like when a data model was decided badly in week two.
Questions
The ones people actually ask.
What is a bespoke CRM?
A bespoke CRM is a customer relationship management system built around one business's actual process rather than a general-purpose product that business has to adapt to. Off-the-shelf CRMs assume a sales pipeline with stages, contacts and deals. That fits a software company well and a groundworks contractor badly. A bespoke CRM models what the business really tracks (sites, surveys, certificates, engineers, recurring visits) and nothing it does not. It costs more upfront than a subscription, and there is no vendor roadmap adding features you did not ask for.
How much does a bespoke CRM cost in the UK?
In our own reading of published UK prices, a genuinely simple single-pipeline bespoke CRM costs £2,000 to £5,000, a mid-tier build £8,000 to £25,000, and a multi-module system £25,000 upwards. Agencies that build bespoke CRMs usually advertise from £15,000. We quote each CRM build after the systems audit, normally £495 and free for a limited time, because the record types, users and integrations decide the price. The full breakdown is in what a bespoke CRM costs to build.
Do you offer CRM consultancy as well as builds?
Yes, and it usually comes first. The systems audit is CRM consultancy in practice: how your work actually flows, which product would fit it, and whether anything needs building at all. It is allowed to conclude that HubSpot, Pipedrive or a product made for your industry is the answer, and if it does, we will say which one and why.
Can you help with CRM implementation, not just a bespoke build?
Yes. Much of the work is implementation: setting up and connecting a CRM you have bought, moving the data across from spreadsheets or an old system, and joining it to your website, accounts and email so it is actually used. That is systems integration, from £650 for a single join and £1,950 for a connected system.
How long does a bespoke CRM take to build?
A focused CRM is typically four to eight weeks from the end of the audit. Add operational modules and it runs to three months or more. The audit gives you a real date before you commit, because the timeline depends on how many record types there are and how many other systems have to be spoken to, and neither is guessable from a phone call.
What happens to the data we already have?
It gets migrated, and the migration is part of the build rather than an extra line at the end. Spreadsheets, an existing CRM export, an old database: all of it is mapped onto the new model and checked against the originals before anyone starts working in the new system. Where the old data is inconsistent, and it usually is somewhere, we show you the inconsistencies rather than quietly picking a winner.
Do we own it, or are we renting it from you?
You own it. The code, the data and the accounts are yours, and the documentation is written so another developer can pick it up. Hosting and aftercare are optional and cancellable. If you decide to take the whole thing elsewhere, nothing stops working and nobody withholds a password. For larger systems, a source code escrow agreement with a third-party agent can be written into the contract, so the code is released to you on defined trigger events. The capabilities page has the rest of the due-diligence answers.
What happens after launch?
Monitoring is available from £49 a month with no contract. Failures are caught and dealt with before somebody in the office notices a job did not arrive, and changes are quoted before they are built. It is optional: everything runs on your accounts, so the system keeps running if you stop paying us.
Is a bespoke system cheaper than paying per seat?
Eventually, and the crossover depends on your headcount and how many products you are stacking. Four products at £35 a seat for twelve people comes to about £20,000 a year in licences, before you count the time lost retyping between them, and that is the figure a build has to beat over its life. We will run that arithmetic on your real numbers during the audit, including the case where it says do not build.
Why is a CRM build quoted instead of priced from a figure?
Because the four things that decide what a CRM costs vary more between businesses than one starting figure could honestly cover: how many record types it holds, how many people use it and with what permissions, how much data has to move across, and how many other systems it has to speak to. The audit measures them, and the quote that follows is fixed in writing, in stages, before anything is built. For published UK market ranges, see what a bespoke CRM costs to build.
Can it work with the software we are keeping?
Yes, and that is usually the point. Accounting, email, calendars, a shop, a phone system: anything with an API can be joined, and quite a lot without one can be too. Where a tool is genuinely closed we will tell you before the build rather than during it. That work is described on the automation integration page.
What if we only need part of this?
Then build part of it. These systems are better grown than launched whole: one record type that earns its keep, then the next. A connected system from £1,950 that joins what you already have is often the right first move, and it is a smaller commitment than a build. If you need portals or internal tools rather than a system of record, that is bespoke software.
Before you commission one, read is a custom CRM worth it? for what owners who built one report, and, if you run a trade or field service business, job management software or a bespoke CRM?
Start with the audit, not the build.
A written answer about what to build, what to buy and what to leave alone, normally £495 and free for a limited time.