Best Technology Stack for Building CRM Software

Every company must maintain appropriate customer relationships to drive higher revenues, gross profit margins, and brand value. However, it is impossible until and unless the business executives sit down and analyze their relationship status with their target audience and existing customers. If the business cannot provide value and purpose, the existing customers can easily leave, reducing their retention rate significantly.  

That's where the use cases of CRM software or customer relationship management software comes into play. Although most startups and small and medium-scale enterprises rely on the off-shelf CRM software available on the market, several big enterprises and Fortune 500 companies want their personalized software. It's important to know how the CRM software is developed and the technologies that should be used for the process.  

Keeping this in mind, we have discussed the technology stack to develop the CRM software and other related aspects. 

What is the importance of having CRM software?  

Before understanding the technology stack used for developing CRM software, you must know the benefits of this particular enterprise application. Below we have discussed some ways in which CRM software helps businesses progress further and take their brand value up by several notches.  

1. The CRM software educates the target audience about the brand, its purpose, its mission, and its vision. As a result, customers gain more knowledge about the brand and how it differs from the rest of the competitors in the same market niche.  
2. With the help of data sets obtained from any CRM software, analysts can generate reports for customer sales, retention percentages, bounce rates, and so on. This helps businesses understand how their sales department is performing and whether they can satisfy their customers.  
3. When CRM and ERP software programs are integrated, they can help in appropriate asset relocation and usage. Besides, they also help in understanding how the business processes are working and whether they can meet the audience's expectations. 
4. Thanks to CRM software, every company can build a proper brand value in the market and stand out despite the competition. It isn't easy to level the brand value, especially when the market is hyper-competitive. That's why integrating CRM software has become crucial for almost every business, regardless of size. 

What Technology Stack should be used to develop CRM software? 

The technology stack used to develop CRM software will depend on the entire software development lifecycle phases. We have explained different technological tools and platforms usually used to build custom CRM software.

Interface designing 

The first and foremost work to be done to develop the CRM software is designing the interface. In other words, here, we will use technologies that can be used to develop the UI components and build the entire user interface to act as the front end of the software. 

Ideally, frameworks like react JS, node JS, Angular JS, and flutter are used to develop the entire front end of any customized CRM software just like HubSpot. These frameworks allow reuse of the codes and ensure the software can be used across multiple operating systems. 

Back-end functionality development  

Once the UI is developed, it's time to find out the technology stack that can be integrated to develop the backend functionalities of the CRM software. PHP and Java are the two most popular programming languages used to develop packing functionalities, especially since they have wonderful frameworks like Laravel for PHP and Eclipse for Java. 

Apart from this, you also need to work on a database where all the datasets will be stored in a structured format. Oracle, PLSQL, mongo DB, and PostgreSQL are some of the best databases to be used with CRM software. 

Integration development 

As the CRN software is always integrated with several other functional programs in the enterprise, you need to develop the plugins. Ideally, the plugins are developed based on API requests, and ResfulAPI is the best option. 

It has wonderful frameworks available on the market, including Postman. The best part of this framework is that it can be used to develop and test the API requests and responses to check whether the integrations will be successful once the codes are deployed into the live server. 

Testing and quality assurance  

As most development companies work on agile methodologies, development and testing are done simultaneously. Testing tools will depend on the type of testing phase integrated with the project. For example, manual testing is usually done on the software itself, and no other external tool is required. However, for automation testing, the best frameworks that can be used are selenium and eclipse. 

If you want to go for load, performance, stress, or volume testing, you must choose a proper tool to accommodate these testing types. Robotic process automation is also one of the major testing methods through which quality assurance can be checked, and the entire manual process can be automated. Blue prism is the best framework for RPA that can be used here. 

Code deployment and release 

The final phase of the software development life cycle is the deployment of the codes and release into the live production server. The principles of DevOps can be implemented here by creating continuous integration and delivery pipelines. 

Some popular frameworks used for deploying the codes into the user acceptance testing environment and production server at Jenkins, GitLab, Ansible, Amazon Web Services, Docker, Kubernetes, and Urbancode. 

[Related Article: 5 Steps of Effective CRM Implementation Strategy]

Best Tech Stack to be used for developing CRM software

There are different types of technology stack that can be used to develop the CRM software comprising various tools and frameworks. Below are some of the best tech stacks you can consider while developing the CRM software. 

ASP.NET

One of the most popular technology stacks to be used is the ASP.NET. The CRM software developed can run on Linux and Windows. It uses the following technologies:

1. ASP.NET MVC for managing the model view and controller architecture
2. SQL server as the database
3. IIS for accessing Microsoft’s web server
4. Azure for code deployment

MEAN Stack

To develop a highly scalable CRM software, the best stack you can use is the MEAN stack. It has the best technologies allowing to develop cross-platform software with lighter codes, faster execution, and excellent data storage. It comprises of:

1. MongoDB as the database to store data
2. Express.js for backend development
3. AngularJS for frontend development
4. NodeJS to run server-side JS scripts

MEAN has two other alternatives as MERN and MEVN. In the MERN stack, the frontend framework is changed from AngularJS to ReactJS. On the other hand, in MEVN, VueJS is used. 

Ruby on Rails

Another most important tech stack that can be used to develop CRM software is the Ruby on Rails. It is based on Ruby programming language for developing the backend codes. On the contrary, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are used to develop the user interface. To transfer data and establish appropriate integrations, JSON and XML scripts are used. 

HubSpot

One of the most productive and efficient tech stacks that can be used to develop a custom CRM software is HubSpot. It is a comprehensive platform where different tools are readily available to mainly optimize the sales pipeline and also helps in building the user interface, backend functions, plugins for integrations, and even a database for data storage.

Conclusion 

In this article, we have explained the type of technology stacks required to develop CRM software and the factors to consider to choose the right stack. Based on our explanations, you can easily get from the tech stack to be used and commence the development process, as integrating the CRM software is crucial for your business development and progress. 

Choose the CRM for your needs