Creatio CRM

Creatio CRM (formerly Sales Creatio and before that Bpm'online CRM) is a comprehensive tool that's designed to handle the complete sales cycle, from initial lead to repeat sales for midsize businesses. Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) can benefit from Creatio CRM, but its range of features and pricing are clearly aimed at larger organizations. This offers a versatile but somewhat involved process based on a low-code development tool set. Once mastered, however, it allows for deeper customization can make Creatio CRM compatible with larger organizations' more difficult and specific needs. All that flexibility, however, may be a little too convoluted for small business users. SMBs that want to put in the effort can certainly make use of Creatio CRM, but its complexity keeps it slightly behind our CRM Editors' Choice winners, Apptivo CRM and Zoho CRM.  

Like several other competitors, Creatio CRM has more to offer than just CRM. The company is also a top player in the business process management (BPM) space. This means it offers project management and development tools designed to let business analyze, map, and then build custom apps to address their unique business processes or workflows. To help, the company has a low-code/no-code tool called Creatio Studio. We haven't yet reviewed that product as part of our low-code development platform review roundup but, if you want to try it out yourself, then the company has a Creatio Studio Free version, too.

The Creatio solution stack is made up of three parts: Creatio CRM (the CRM portion), Creatio Marketing (a tool for marketing automation, and Creatio Service (a tool aimed at help desk (operation). All three come with the main package so you don't have to purchase different software for different departments. However, you should investigate the capabilities of the somewhat rudimentary marketing and help desk modules to ensure they meet your requirements.

Pricing and Features

Creatio CRM offers a 14-day free trial (no payment information required). Paid plans start at $30 per user per month for the Team plan which is geared towards SMBs with direct sales teams. $35 per user per month corresponds with the Commerce plan which is the best choice for e-commerce and includes Orders and Invoices . An Enterprise tier costs $60 per user per month including sales forecasting and project management features. This tier is best suited to medium and large enterprises and can help automate the direct and channel sales cycle.

As an administrator, you can switch between Marketing, Sales, and Service right from your dashboard. This can be done simply by toggling through the sidebar on the left-hand side. It can also be used as a chat window so you can have discussions with colleagues without navigating away from the lead, contact, or opportunity that you're viewing.

The Sales dashboard has options for leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, and orders. What's nice is if there's a feature you don't use, you can hide it to declutter your dashboard. You can create multiple dashboards and move and resize the elements to your specifications at will. I found this to be intuitive and responsive.

On the right-hand side of the screen are your notifications, which include meetings, tasks, and activity alerts. While using the free trial, you can populate your account with sample data, which I found helpful for this review. It's a great way to get acclimated rather than being greeted with a blank slate.

The Creatio Marketplace has an array of apps and services that you can connect with the software as well as templates for activities like an upsale or employee onboarding.

Contacts and Lead Management

Creatio CRM is being described as sales management software, CRM is but a subset of its wide range of functionality. The solution is based on a unified business process that is both adaptive and predictive. This process spans the entire sales funnel, from lead management on down to closing. The idea is that the software not only helps you be productive, but acts as a virtual assistant of sorts. It reminds you to complete tasks and predicts what you might need to do next based on your previous actions. The company has out-of-the-box products for specific industries such as real estate, finance, and retail. It also has convenient mobile apps for Android and Apple iOS devices that can be used offline.

You can easily add contacts by going to that section using the left-hand sidebar and either clicking the New Contact button (to add one at a time) or the Settings icon and selecting Data Import. Upload a Microsoft Excel file, map the fields, and you're all set. You can attach notes and files to a contact, and associate emails and calls if you've connected your email and telephony to the software. Companies are called Accounts here and can be associated with multiple contacts. In each record, you can see where each contact came from, such as an email campaign, event, or webinar. Contacts can also be tagged or grouped together as needed.

When you add a lead, Creatio CRM categorizes it by a field called Customer Need, rather than by status, such as a prospect. The Customer Need field has a drop-down menu with options including the need for products, software, and additional service. Leads then go into stages, which include "Not Interested" and "Handoff to sales."

Where Creatio CRM stands out is that, when you create a lead, it automatically sets up reminders to follow up with a prospective customer in a few days, with specifics on how to proceed. For example, after I set up a lead for additional service for a customer on a Friday, my calendar automatically added a reminder to follow up and discuss the company's needs and budget. This feature is a massive time-saver over the long term and keeps tasks from falling through the cracks. If I wanted to, I could change the date and time of the reminder and update its status to Completed, In Progress, or Canceled. The built-in calendar can sync with Google G Suite as well as Microsoft Office 365, Yahoo, Zoho, and others.

You can also track the stage transition history of lead records using Creatio CRM's History tab. Also, using the recently revamped Lead - Opportunity pipeline dashboard, you can get insights on lead maturity by tracking lead conversion rates from initial interest to closed deals.

While you can add leads via either the Sales or Marketing modules, it's the Marketing dashboard where most of the lead management takes place. There's an array of options listed on the left-hand side of the screen. One, for example, helps you create a landing page or a form for your website. First, it asks which type you want (event participation registration, order registration, lead registration, or case registration), then supplies the HTML code. Some familiarity with HTML is recommended here, since you must work directly with the code to personalize it. Insightly CRM makes this process less complicated, letting you add fields via a drop-down menu, although you will still probably need to tinker with the code.

The Marketing module is also where you manage campaigns. You can include automatic triggers—for instance, sending a follow-up email or a reminder if a recipient hasn't opened an email. The software automatically resends trigger and bulk emails if they are not delivered if the provider or service is temporarily offline.

Creatio CRM comes with the ability to use SMS, email, and push notifications to communicate with prospective customers. To pull leads off Social Networking, you'll need to work with one of its partner companies. As a result, companies that heavily depend on social networking for lead generation may want to look at Zoho CRM instead, which includes links to social networks.

Creatio CRM offers other useful lead generation tools as well. An Events tool helps you plan an event such as a webinar, exposition, or even an advertising campaign. A form lets you plan out items such as dates, budget, and response. Another tool called Marketing Plans lets you map out and budget a series of marketing activities (e-mail marketing, loyalty programs, and product promotions) to collect more leads. And a tool called Dashboards gives you a bird's-eye view of all your actions: contacts, campaigns, bulk emails, and upcoming events. That is where you can create what Creatio CRM calls a Lead Pipeline; the graph (which more resembles a funnel) illustrates the current status of your leads. It's also available from the Sales module.

You can personalize all of these tools to fit your company's specific needs. However, the more specialization you want to use, the higher your level of expertise needs to be. Besides videos and extensive documentation, Creatio CRM offers developer training courses through their Creatio Academy which range from free to $4,800 in cost.

Tracking Prospective Deals

The Opportunity tab is used to track prospective deals in a detailed manner. You can associate opportunities with contacts and accounts or tag them with "moods" that represent how confident you are about them. Ranging from "confident" to "doubtful" to "panicked," the six moods add a visual element to reports. You can also input the budget, rate the competition, and track opportunities from qualification to a closed sale. Creatio CRM also has AI-based predictive tools that help with opportunity scoring.

Reports are available for contacts, accounts, opportunities, orders, and more. The software will also generate monthly forecasts based on customer, sales division, and sales manager. At the end of the month, these forecasts will be matched up with actual numbers based on your activity, which is a great tool to have for presentations with higher-ups. All reports can be presented in a list view or as bar graphs.

If you need help along the way, the support team is available 24/7 by chat, email, and phone. Each customer gets assigned a dedicated success manager. There are also online tutorials, videos, and a user community.

Creatio CRM wants to make your life easier by not just offering a repository for contacts and leads, but by automating tasks and predicting your next move, like a trusted assistant. Its huge feature set is daunting at first, but we love that you can hide features you don't need and customize your dashboards. Whether you need standard CRM features or a bundled solution for multiple departments, Creatio CRM will help your business run more efficiently.

Creatio CRM's huge feature set may seem overwhelming at first, specially for SMBs and startups setting up their CRM workflows. Growing midsize businesses and enterprise customers are better suited to its advanced feature offerings. Creatio CRM goes beyond CRM and is a platform that can store vital contacts and leads while providing task automation and predicting a businesses' next move.