The day a salesperson resigned, two years of customer relationships walked out the door
An industrial equipment distributor: six salespeople, roughly NT$120M annual revenue. Quotes lived in individual Excel files, contacts in personal phones, follow-up dates in people's heads. When a senior rep left last year, the handover file listed 38 accounts — but a mailbox audit found more than 400 companies with real trading history. Over the next three months, 11 maintenance renewals were never flagged, four switched suppliers, and the estimated loss was around NT$2.6M. That is not a sales failure. The company simply never had a single source of truth for customer data. That is what a CRM solves — not adding one more form for reps to fill in.
When it fits vs. when it does not
| Good fit for a CRM | Not yet (skip it for now) |
|---|---|
| 3+ salespeople, and the same account is touched by several of them | 1–2 person company with < 100 customers (a spreadsheet plus calendar reminders is enough) |
| Sales cycles longer than 30 days, with repeated follow-ups and quote versions | Pure one-off retail with no remarketing need (build POS and membership instead) |
| Renewals, repeat orders and consumables drive revenue (maintenance, annual contracts, dealers) | Duplicate and blank rates above 40% (clean the data first — do not move garbage into a new system) |
| Marketing and sales share one list (web forms, LINE, trade shows) | The motive is monitoring how many hours reps work (it gets quietly sabotaged in month one) |
| 500+ customer records and Excel files are already overwriting each other | The sales process changes every quarter and is not settled (write it down in two pages first) |
Alternatives matrix
| Option | Cost band | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay on Excel / Google Sheets | Close to NT$0 | Zero learning curve, maximum flexibility | No reminders, no audit trail, concurrent edits overwrite each other; knowledge leaves with the employee |
| Off-the-shelf SaaS (Zoho CRM / Pipedrive / HubSpot) | Roughly US$14–100 per user per month, per official pricing pages | Live in 2–4 weeks; mature mobile apps and email sync | Limited customisation; data hosted offshore; cost scales linearly with headcount |
| SaaS + a custom integration layer | SaaS subscription + NT$80,000–200,000 build | Keeps mature SaaS features, customises only the ERP / website / LINE touchpoints | Two systems to maintain; SaaS releases can break the integration |
| Custom CRM (Laravel + Filament) | NT$250,000–600,000 build, no per-seat licence | Fits the process exactly, integrates deeply with existing ERP and quoting, data stays in-house | Email sync, mobile and notification scheduling must all be built; first-year maintenance is heavier |
The sweet spot is usually one of the middle two rows: fewer than 10 reps, start with SaaS; once quoting rules or dealer tiering are a core competitive advantage, building is worth it.
Delivery process (with tools and deliverables)
- Stage 1: audit and data health check (3–5 days) | Excel, OpenRefine | Deliverables: field mapping table, duplicate/blank rate report, deduplication rules. Most clients discover only about 60% of their estimated accounts are real.
- Stage 2: sales process alignment (3–4 days) | Figma, Notion | Deliverables: pipeline stage definitions (six or fewer), entry and exit criteria per stage, minimum required-field set.
- Stage 3: data model and permissions (4–6 days) | Deliverables: company–contact–deal–activity four-layer structure, visibility rules (own / team / company-wide), audit trail fields.
- Stage 4: build or configure (10–20 days) | Laravel + Filament, or Zoho / Pipedrive configuration | Deliverables: pipeline board, quote version history, renewal and check-in reminder schedules.
- Stage 5: integrations (5–8 days) | Gmail API, LINE Messaging API, website forms, existing ERP | Deliverables: leads land automatically, emails and messages attach to the right account.
- Stage 6: migration and training (5–8 days) | Deliverables: import validation report, a one-hour training session plus a two-page SOP, two weeks running old and new in parallel.
Total: roughly 30–45 working days (15–20 days for a SaaS configuration project).
Real cost breakdown
- Data cleanup and migration: NT$30,000–80,000 (400–3,000 records, including dedup and import validation)
- SaaS licences: 6 users at about US$49 each per month, roughly NT$110,000 a year; double the headcount and you double the cost — the most commonly forgotten line
- Custom integration layer: NT$80,000–200,000 depending on how many systems connect
- Custom CRM build: NT$250,000–600,000
- Email and SMS sending volume: NT$1,000–5,000 per month
- Training and process coaching: NT$20,000–50,000; annual maintenance: 15–20% of build cost
- Most underestimated: internal effort — the project owner spends 40–60 hours on cleanup and acceptance
| Tier | Budget range (estimate) | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | NT$80,000–150,000 | SaaS configuration + data cleanup and migration + web form integration + training |
| Standard | NT$250,000–450,000 | Custom core (pipeline, quote versions, reminders, permissions) + LINE and email integration |
| Advanced | NT$500,000–900,000 | Adds two-way ERP sync, dealer-tier pricing, performance dashboards and mobile |
All figures are estimated ranges in New Taiwan dollars, adjusted by record count, number of integrations and process complexity.
What clients expect vs. what actually happens
| Clients expect | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Just import the Excel file — one day of work | Deciding whether three spellings are the same company takes three to five days and usually needs client-side human review |
| Once it is live, reps will naturally use it | Without a manager running a weekly pipeline review inside the system, entry rates fall below 30% within three months |
| More fields is better — capture everything | Past about eight required fields, reps start entering junk; data quality beats data quantity |
| A CRM will produce more deals by itself | What it produces is "no deal gets forgotten"; growth comes from follow-up discipline, the system only makes that discipline auditable |
| Reports can show anything we want | If stage definitions are inconsistent, the dashboard just produces beautifully formatted wrong numbers |
Common traps and how to avoid them
- Moving dirty data across untouched: run duplicate and blank rate reports, agree deduplication rules before import, and keep the original file for reference.
- A pipeline with a dozen stages: cap it at six, and write down what qualifies a deal to enter each one, otherwise forecasts are meaningless.
- Too many required fields: ship with five to eight required fields, leave the rest optional, and add more after three months of real usage.
- Email and LINE threads not auto-attached: integrate the Gmail API and LINE Messaging API so conversations attach automatically — any manual copy-paste step will eventually break.
- No permission design, everyone sees everything: define own / team / company-wide visibility up front and turn on the audit trail so bulk exports before a resignation are visible.
- Ignoring personal data rules: build consent notices, opt-out and deletion flows in line with Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act, and record the consent source for marketing lists.
- Nobody owns it after launch: name a data steward who checks duplicates and stale deals monthly, or you are back in Excel within six months.
Success metrics and the first 90 days
- Day 30 — adoption: are more than 80% of reps logging in weekly, and do created deals cover 90% of actual quoting volume? If not, look for process friction before blaming people.
- Day 60 — data quality and flow: reduction in duplicate records, share of deals not updated past due (target below 15%), average days in each stage.
- Day 90 — revenue linkage: renewal rate after reminders fire, close rate by lead source, whether the average sales cycle is shortening. Only now is it time for a second wave of customisation.
Decision checklist
- ☐ We have three or more salespeople and accounts are touched by several of them
- ☐ In the past year we lost an identifiable deal because a follow-up was forgotten
- ☐ Customer data sits in two or more places (Excel, phones, mailboxes)
- ☐ When someone resigns, we cannot recover the full interaction history
- ☐ Renewals or repeat orders are 20%+ of revenue
- ☐ We can name our sales stages and everyone describes them the same way
- ☐ We accept capping required fields at eight
- ☐ A manager will run a weekly pipeline review inside the system
- ☐ We have named an internal data steward
- ☐ The motive is better follow-up quality, not employee monitoring
- ☐ Training and first-year maintenance are budgeted
- ☐ We know whether two-way ERP or quoting sync is required
- ☐ Someone owns consent purpose and opt-out handling
Nine or more checked and your odds are good. Five or fewer: start with a process audit and a data health check instead.
FAQ
SaaS or a custom CRM?
Two questions decide it. First, will you exceed 15 users? If so, the licence savings from building start to matter. Second, are quoting rules or dealer tiering a core competitive advantage? If so, SaaS customisation limits will bite quickly. Two noes: go straight to Zoho or Pipedrive.
How long does it take, and can we start smaller?
Yes, and you should. A lean version — accounts and contacts, one pipeline, follow-up reminders — takes 15–20 working days on SaaS or about 25 days custom. Marketing automation, dashboards and ERP sync can wait until after day 90.
Do we have to migrate every Excel record?
No. Migrate accounts with real activity in the last three years and archive the rest. Dragging in leads that have not ordered in five years only dilutes reporting and raises cleanup cost.
What if the sales team refuses to use it?
Most resistance is "there is nothing in it for me". Make the CRM save reps time first: auto-fill quotes from account data, push follow-up reminders to LINE, generate monthly reports automatically. At the same time, managers should review deals only inside the system and stop accepting Excel reports. Entry rates usually recover within two weeks.
Next step
Our CRM implementation service starts at NT$250,000 and covers the data health check and migration, sales process alignment, pipeline and reminder scheduling, permission and audit design, and training. Still evaluating? We also run a standalone CRM readiness check: a duplicate-rate report, recommended pipeline stages, and a SaaS-versus-custom cost comparison within two days.
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: 0916-224-047
- LINE: @ufv9089p