How to choose the right CRM and consolidate your tech stack

More tools in your tech stack don’t always make your teams more productive. In fact, 42% of sales reps say they feel overwhelmed by too many tools, and 84% of sales teams without an all-in-one platform plan to consolidate their technology.

A truly unified CRM should not only consolidate information from sales, marketing, and customer service teams, but also make a meaningful difference in their daily work.

If you’re thinking about implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system in your organisation, you’re obviously not alone. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global CRM market is valued at US$126.17 billion (in 2026) , and it’s expected to reach US$320 billion by 2034. That boom means you have a wealth of CRM solutions to choose from. The trick is finding the right one.

This guide should make that a little easier. We’ll explain what to look for in a CRM and provide an evaluation framework you can use during your selection process.

• The cost of running disconnected tools
• CRM selection criteria to focus on
• A framework for evaluating CRM platforms
• A truly unified CRM in practice
• Making the call
• FAQs

Before we dive into tips for selecting a CRM, it’s useful to briefly highlight the reason for considering one. According to our research, sellers use an average of eight separate tools to close deals , which has a measurable impact on productivity and performance. A separate study by Gartner found that sellers who are overwhelmed by too much technology are 45% less likely to achieve their quota .

The same problems can occur across other parts of your business, such as marketing and customer service. As we revealed in our 11th annual Connectivity Benchmark Report, the average Australian enterprise now manages 1,081 separate applications, and only 22% of them are integrated.

A unified CRM is built to reduce fragmented data and consolidate as many legacy systems as possible. When done correctly, this brings significant benefits in terms of efficiency, team performance, and organisational savings.

For example, a Forrester Consulting study was jointly commissioned by Genesys and Salesforce to demonstrate the financial impact of adopting a unified CRM. The study was based on client feedback over a three-year period and resulted in a composition organisation with the following key outcomes:

• 266% ROI
• US$1.4 million in new sales over three years due to improved efficiency
• US$2 million in savings over three years through the consolidation of legacy systems

Terms like ‘all-in-one’ and ‘unified’ are frequently used in marketing materials, but they don’t mean the same thing. Dig a little deeper to understand if the CRM will actually achieve the goals we outlined above.

We’ve selected five key areas to consider when assessing CRM solutions. They’ll help you gauge how ‘unified’ a CRM really is:

Your sales, marketing, and customer service departments all collect information about your customers. They also rely on that information to provide personalised service. If your customer data is entered and stored on disconnected systems, no one will have a true, universal view of who each customer is, what their pain points are, and what potential selling opportunities might exist.

A unified CRM should centralise all that information and update it in real time, so users from any team can access a true, up-to-date picture for each client. This is different from synchronised data, which may exist on separate platforms and only get updated periodically, creating potential gaps.

A good starting point is to check whether a CRM uses synchronised or centralised data. The latter should be a baseline requirement for any CRM you’re considering.

As with data management, there are several ways to integrate your sales, marketing, and support functions. The first is to bring them into an all-inclusive platform, built from the ground up with different requirements in mind. The second is to continue running separate systems that are connected using an additional software layer, also known as middleware.

The second option comes with several vulnerabilities. After the initial system integration project, either your IT team or a third-party vendor will need to maintain the system because an update on one platform could impact the stability of everything else. This introduces an additional recurring cost. In addition, your teams will still work on separate platforms, with each requiring its own external support and staff training provisions.

A unified platform consolidates ongoing support into one supplier, reducing costs and the risk of failure. It also fosters more cooperation and collaboration between teams, as they’re all working in the same system.

AI claims the third spot on our list for two reasons: The AI adoption rate is increasing rapidly, but disconnected AI agents create new problems. According to our 2026 Connectivity Report, 87% of Australian businesses say that most or all of their teams are now using AI agents, but 50% of those agents operate in isolated silos. That results in significant overlaps in functions, inconsistent information, and a potential risk of shadow AI .

A consolidated agentic AI solution, working across sales, marketing, and customer service, ensures that all your AI agents are operating from a single source of truth. This drives more consistent messaging across each of the channels that customers engage with your business, and it offers more powerful and effective reporting.

When assessing the scalability of a CRM, ask yourself, “Will a future change to our requirements mean a major new IT project or a short phone call to customer support”?

Your business won’t remain static, so it’s important to have a CRM that can adapt to your growth and changing needs without requiring significant reengineering. In the first instance, you should check what functions and modules are available across the platform. You might not need all of them initially, but it’s useful to know they’re there as and when you want them.

Another key feature to look for is low-code configurability, which means that your in-house team can adjust key attributes themselves, such as workflows, team processes, and the information that reports contain.

Finally, you should confirm that the CRM vendor works with a network of partners. Salesforce’s AppExchange is a good example of a strong ecosystem that can expand your CRM’s capabilities if a specific need arises.

The situation you’re trying to avoid here is known as ‘vendor lock-in’, where a CRM or other software solution stops meeting your needs, but the only options available are to switch systems entirely or pay for a custom addition. Both of those options can be slow and expensive.

While the above criteria explain what a unified CRM should look like, they don’t cover everything you’ll need to consider during your selection process. To that end, we’ve created the following CRM evaluation framework that can help you identify the most suitable options.

A common trap is to try to make a business fit into a software solution, rather than the other way around. It might be because of a particularly attractive price or because of an impressive sales presentation, but it runs the risk of creating frustration for the people who will ultimately be using the system. It can also signal that the CRM itself lacks flexibility.

A more logical approach is to understand what your organisation needs, both now and in the foreseeable future. Ask yourself a few key questions:

• How many users will you have in sales, marketing, and customer service?
• What specific tasks are each of those departments performing, and is there anything they want to do better?
• What changes do you expect in the next three years?
• What systems are you currently running, and how connected/disconnected is the data between them?

Your answers will help you assess the specific features of each CRM, as well as identify the questions you need to ask each vendor.

Understanding how ‘unified’ a CRM is should happen in parallel with the previous section. In addition to assessing how the platform will fit into your business, you’ll want to understand:

• How well it integrates your customer data
• How much it consolidates applications, both within and across departments
• Whether it consolidates your use of AI agents
• How scalable it is
• What third-party applications are approved and supported

Your discussions with providers should address these concerns, and you can use a simple scorecard to compare overall performance against each criterion. If a vendor provides a demo, ensure that your end users can be involved, as they can often flag things that procurement or IT teams don’t notice.

Watch out for red flags, like modules that require third-party connectors to deliver core functions or features (like AI agents) that the vendor can’t demonstrate in a live setting. They indicate that the solution is a bundle of separate systems rather than a truly integrated platform.

Many organisations focus on the per-user license fees without considering ongoing operational costs, potential efficiency gains, and the risks of poor staff adoption. When comparing costs from one CRM to the next, it’s important to factor in the following:

Many CRMs are priced on a per-user basis, but what those per-user rates include can vary significantly from one vendor to another. You should always ask the vendor to clarify what functions are included in the fee to ensure you're comparing platforms on a like-for-like basis.

Usage fees are increasingly common additions to per-user rates, especially for functions like agentic AI. You should ask for realistic estimates of what your business will use and how much it will cost.

Finally, consider how many users you’ll have in year one, year three, and year five, and ask how much it will cost to add new users.

Implementation of your CRM should include initial discovery and mapping of your current systems, data migration, setting up users and permissions, any custom features you’ve requested, and staff training .

Clarify exactly what each vendor’s implementation programs comprise, and if any of the above steps are missing, ask how much extra it will cost. Large IT implementations run 45% over budget on average , demonstrating how often businesses underestimate in this area.

Licensing fees often include some level of support and data security, but this can differ between vendors. It’s important to clarify that you’re receiving the level of support you need. If not, ask how much it will cost to upgrade.

Operational costs should also reflect the time required for any internal resources to keep your CRM running smoothly, as well as any third-party vendors you’re working with. The more integrated your CRM is, the lower these costs will be.

Your total cost of ownership should include a realistic appraisal of the savings you expect to achieve. This may differ from one platform to another, depending on the level of integration included. Here are some factors to consider:

• How many applications do you expect to replace, and what licensing and maintenance costs will be eliminated as a result?
• What level of automation does the CRM offer? Ask the vendor for verified statistics on how this affects staff efficiency and productivity.
• Will the new CRM replace existing data security provisions, and how much will this save?

We mentioned that the transition to the new platform impacts the total cost of ownership, but it’s also important from an operational perspective. Broadly speaking, your vendor can either move everything across at once or conduct a staged transition, so you should understand exactly what their plan is.

While it may be tempting to cut everything across as quickly as possible, this could cause significant disruptions across your business, especially if unforeseen problems arise. If your vendor has proposed such a transition, it’s best to clarify how they’ll manage those disruptions.

A staged transition will take more time before your systems are consolidated, but this approach allows for more careful management of the process. For example, if you begin with the sales team, you can focus on ensuring that their data has migrated successfully, workflows have been correctly set up, and all team members understand how the new system works.

Neither approach is right or wrong, as long as it’s well-planned and different contingencies have been considered. Getting things right at this early stage can mean the difference between a system that your teams want to use and one that makes their jobs more difficult.

As we mentioned earlier, your CRM options are virtually limitless. As a result, you may be wondering what types of CRM meet all the criteria we’ve mentioned and how they work in the real world.

To help with your evaluation, it could be helpful to consider Salesforce’s solution, as it covers each of the criteria and serves as a truly unified platform.

Our Data 360 is designed to consolidate customer data from fragmented systems, so you have a single source of truth that’s updated in real time. That data feeds into native applications for sales, marketing, customer service, and commerce teams, with powerful customised reporting and workflows for each. Finally, Agentforce is our agentic AI solution that helps you coordinate your adoption of this rapidly evolving technology.

RBC Wealth Management demonstrates how this all comes together. The team was struggling with disconnected systems across the organisation, including 26 separate platforms containing customer information. The goal was to consolidate data onto one platform, streamline processes, and maintain the highest levels of data security.

The results included a massive drop in client onboarding time, from weeks to an average of 24 minutes, and a 50% reduction in IT maintenance costs.

Manual tasks in the ordering process were slowing productivity and introducing errors for manufacturing firm Legend Corporation. The company needed a solution to support its future growth, so it engaged Salesforce to help consolidate data and automate time-consuming manual tasks, including approximately 350 daily orders that existed as PDF attachments to emails. The solution combined Data 360 and MuleSoft, our integration platform that connects data across non-Salesforce systems.

Salesforce combined Data 360, MuleSoft IDP, and Prompt Builder to create intelligent automations that ultimately save the customer service team 1,000 hours of workload annually, freeing them up to improve customer service.