Know what your CRM has to do before you talk to vendors.

The account record is the shared memory of the customer relationship. Hierarchies, deduplication and a complete activity history decide whether anyone trusts what they see.

1. Account hierarchiesParent and child accounts with roll-up of contacts, opportunities and revenue to the parent.
2. Duplicate detection and mergeDuplicate contacts and accounts flagged at entry and merged with a full history retained.
3. Activity timelineEmails, calls, meetings, notes and tickets on one timeline per contact and account, captured automatically where possible.
4. Custom objects and fieldsAdministrators add fields and related objects without developer work, with validation rules and field-level permissions.
5. Relationship mappingRoles, influence and reporting lines among a customer's contacts recorded and visible on the account.
6. Data enrichmentFirmographic and contact data enriched from a third-party source, with the source and refresh date shown.
7. Consent and preference trackingMarketing consent, channel preferences and do-not-contact flags stored per contact and enforced across outreach.

The pipeline is where forecasting accuracy and rep productivity are won or lost. Stage definitions, required fields and guided next steps turn opinions into a forecast leadership can act on.

1. Configurable sales stagesMultiple pipelines with their own stages, exit criteria and probabilities, changed by an administrator without code.
2. Opportunity managementProducts, quantities, pricing and competitors on the opportunity, with contact roles and a close plan.
3. ForecastingRep, manager and company forecasts by period with commit categories, adjustments and a history of how the forecast moved.
4. Lead capture and routingLeads from web forms, email and imports assigned by territory, round robin or rules, with response-time tracking.
5. Quotes and proposalsQuotes generated from the opportunity with approved pricing and discount approvals, sent and tracked from the record.
6. Email and calendar syncTwo-way sync with the company's email and calendar platform, logging correspondence to the right record automatically.
7. Mobile accessFull read and update access from a mobile application, including offline capture of notes and activities.

A CRM that only sales uses is half a system. Campaign attribution and case handling on the same customer record are what make the revenue picture complete.

1. Campaign managementCampaigns with budget, members, responses and attributed opportunities, reportable to pipeline and revenue.
2. Email marketingSegmented email sends with templates, scheduling, A/B testing and engagement tracked back to the contact.
3. Marketing automationMulti-step journeys triggered by behavior or record changes, with branching and suppression rules.
4. Lead scoringConfigurable scoring on fit and engagement, with thresholds that route leads to sales.
5. Case managementSupport cases with queues, SLAs, escalation and a knowledge base, linked to the account and visible to sales.
6. Customer portalA self-service portal where customers see cases, documents and knowledge articles.
7. Surveys and feedbackSatisfaction or NPS surveys sent from the system and stored on the contact record.

Pipeline reviews, win-rate analysis and attribution all depend on reporting that managers can build themselves and trust, with live data rather than last week's export.

1. Self-service reportsManagers build reports and charts across objects without developer help, and share them with teams.
2. Pipeline and funnel analyticsConversion by stage, velocity, aging and slippage, by rep, team, territory and period.
3. Win-loss analysisClosed outcomes by competitor, reason, product and segment, with the reasons captured as structured fields.
4. Activity reportingCalls, emails and meetings by rep against targets, with coaching views for managers.
5. Attribution reportingCampaign and channel influence on opportunities and revenue, with more than one attribution model.
6. DashboardsRole-based dashboards refreshed from live data, viewable on mobile.
7. Data export and BI accessGoverned access for an external BI tool and scheduled exports of any report.

The CRM has to reflect what happened in billing, support and marketing without anyone re-keying it. Native connectors and a usable API decide how much of that is automatic.

1. Documented APIsPublic REST or equivalent APIs covering every object, with versioning, rate limits and sandbox access documented.
2. ERP and billing integrationAccounts, orders, invoices and payment status synchronized with the finance system, so sales sees the customer's commercial state.
3. Marketing platform integrationTwo-way sync of contacts, consent and engagement with the marketing tools in use, if marketing runs outside the CRM.
4. Telephony and meeting integrationClick-to-call, call logging and recording links, and meeting scheduling from the record.
5. Document and e-signature integrationProposals and contracts generated, sent for signature and stored on the opportunity.
6. Pre-built connector catalogA published catalog of maintained connectors and an integration marketplace with support status stated.
7. Webhooks and eventsNotifications on record changes so other systems react without polling.

Customer data is regulated and the CRM is often the largest store of it. Access by territory, a complete audit trail and privacy controls protect the company as much as the customer.

1. Role and territory-based accessRecord visibility by role, team and territory, with sharing rules and field-level security.
2. Single sign-on and MFASSO through your identity provider and multi-factor authentication enforced for every user.
3. Audit trailField history and login and export logs retained for the compliance period and available to administrators.
4. Privacy compliance toolsConsent records, right-to-erasure and data-subject export handled in the product, with retention policies you control.
5. Sandbox environmentsTest environments refreshed from production for configuration and integration testing.
6. Data backup and exportAutomated backups and a complete export of your data in open formats at any time, including at contract end.
7. Administration without codeFields, layouts, workflows, approvals and permissions managed by an administrator through configuration.