What Is a CRM System and Why an IT Company Needs One

A CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) is software in which a company stores customers, contacts, deals and the entire communication history, and uses it to run sales from the first request to payment. A CRM shows what stage each deal is at, who owns it and what the next step is. For management, it’s one reliable picture of sales instead of spreadsheets and conversations in personal messengers.

This article is for founders and managers of IT companies in Kazakhstan who are deciding whether they need a CRM and which one to choose. We cover what a CRM stores and does, how it differs from spreadsheets and a task tracker, how sales work in IT, cloud versus self-hosted, the two main options on the market (Twenty and amoCRM), signs it’s time to implement a CRM and the mistakes people stumble over most often.

What a CRM stores and what it does

Every CRM has two layers. The first is data: who your customers are and what’s happening with them. The second is process: the rules by which a deal moves toward payment and reminders for people about what to do next.

Entity	What it stores	Why it matters to management
Contacts	People: name, position, phone, email, messengers	You can see exactly who you’re talking to
Companies	The organizations contacts belong to	In B2B, a company buys, but several people decide
Deals	A specific sale: amount, stage, owner, timeline	It’s clear how much money is in play and when it will come in
Pipeline	Deal stages and the rules for moving between them	You can see where deals get stuck and lost
Tasks	The next step on a deal, with a date and an assignee	No customer is left without a reply
Communication history	Emails, calls, meetings, notes, files	A new manager picks up a customer without losing context
Reports	Stage conversion, forecast, manager workload	Decisions are based on data, not gut feeling

What a CRM does on top of this data: it takes in requests from the website and messengers, distributes them among managers, creates next-step tasks, sends reminders about overdue deals, triggers automations when a stage changes and compiles reports. A good CRM takes routine off a manager’s plate and answers management’s question “how are sales going” in a minute.

Which reports to look at from the first month. There are only a few, and all of them are built solely on the data managers actually enter:

• conversion between pipeline stages, to see where deals get lost;
• deals with no next step or with an overdue task;
• average deal length from request to payment;
• sources of paid deals, not just of requests;
• manager workload: how many active deals each one has.

If these five reports are honest, management is already running sales rather than learning about them after the fact. Complex dashboards make sense later, once the team is used to recording every touchpoint.

What a CRM doesn’t do: it doesn’t sell for you and doesn’t fix a weak process. If the company hasn’t agreed on what counts as a qualified request and when a deal moves to the next stage, the system will simply store the chaos neatly.

How a CRM differs from a spreadsheet, email and a task tracker

Managers often ask why they need a separate system if they have Google Sheets, email and a task tracker. The short answer is in the table.

Tool	What it can do	Where it stops working
Spreadsheet	A list of customers and amounts	No communication history, reminders, access permissions or automatic request intake
Email and messengers	Communicating with the customer	Conversations live in personal accounts and leave with the employee
Task tracker	Team tasks, sprints, projects	Doesn’t run a sales pipeline or keep a customer relationship history
CRM	Customers, deals, pipeline, history, reports	Doesn’t replace project management after the sale

In an IT company, a CRM and a task tracker complement each other. The CRM covers the path to the contract; the tracker covers the work after it. We covered how to connect them so that a won deal automatically becomes a project in our article on integrating a CRM and a task tracker.

CRM in an IT company: SaaS, studios and long deals

Sales in IT differ from retail, and a CRM is configured differently for them.

B2B SaaS sales. A deal involves a demo, a trial period, and sign-off from security, legal and procurement. On the customer’s side there are five to seven people with different roles. The CRM must store all of them within one company, record the trial stage and show who actually makes the decision. After the sale, a separate pipeline begins: renewal, adding users, upgrading to a higher plan.

IT studios and agencies. A client comes for a project and then returns for enhancements and support. Here it’s important to see the full history of the relationship: what projects there were, who ran them, what agreements remain. Custom objects are often needed: a project, a work phase, a support contract.

Long deals. The sales cycle in IT often stretches over months. Without a CRM, such deals get forgotten between meetings, and after a quarter nobody remembers who promised what. A CRM keeps the next step and its date, and management sees deals that haven’t moved in a long time.

Channels. Requests come from the website, WhatsApp and Telegram, from partners and conferences. A CRM should collect them into one pipeline and show which channel brings in money, not just inquiries.

Signs you already need a CRM

A CRM is implemented based on symptoms, not company size. If you recognize three or more of these, it’s time.

1. Management learns the status of deals only at the planning meeting and from what managers say.
2. Customers write again because someone forgot to reply.
3. Conversations with customers live in employees’ personal WhatsApp accounts.
4. When a manager leaves, their customers and agreements are lost.
5. You can’t quickly say how much money is in play and when it will come in.
6. It’s unclear which channel brings paid deals and which only brings requests.
7. Handing a customer over from sales to development happens verbally or by forwarding messages.
8. There is a customer spreadsheet, but it exists in several versions and nobody is sure which one is current.

If you have five deals a quarter and they’re all in the founder’s head, a CRM can wait. If you have twenty a month and three managers, you’re already losing money without one; you just can’t see it.

Cloud or self-hosted

This is the first technical question when choosing a CRM, and there’s no universal answer.

A cloud CRM runs on the vendor’s servers. Launch takes hours, the vendor handles updates and backups, and no engineer is needed. The downsides: data is stored wherever the vendor decides, payment follows the vendor’s rules, and how far you can customize is limited by what the system allows.

A self-hosted CRM is installed on the company’s server or with a hosting provider of its choice. The company decides where data is stored and can extend the system through the API and code. The downside: you need an engineer to deploy the system, set up backups and keep it updated.

This decision should be made upfront, not “we’ll move later.” Moving a CRM after a year of use means migrating contacts, deals, history, files and all integrations, and it’s almost always harder than it seems. If you’re unsure, ask two questions. Do you or your clients require data to be stored in the country? Is there someone who will look after the server, updates and backups? Two “yes” answers point to self-hosting, two “no” answers point to the cloud, and mixed answers are usually solved by a contractor who takes over maintenance.

Kazakhstan context. A CRM consists almost entirely of personal data: names, phone numbers, emails, conversations. Some companies want to store this database in Kazakhstan. Many cloud CRMs, including amoCRM, store data outside the country, while a self-hosted system on a Kazakhstan server keeps the database inside the country. The second practical point is payment: foreign cloud services are usually paid with a corporate card in dollars without closing documents that meet Kazakhstan standards, while hosting in Kazakhstan is paid in tenge under a contract.

Twenty and amoCRM: the two main options

For IT companies in Kazakhstan, we most often consider two systems. They solve different problems, and the choice between them is driven by your sales process, not by trends.

Criterion	Twenty	amoCRM
Model	Open source, AGPL-3.0 license	Cloud CRM
Where it runs	Your own server via Docker or the vendor’s cloud	The vendor’s cloud
Where data is stored	Wherever you decide, including Kazakhstan	On amoCRM servers outside Kazakhstan
Strength	Custom objects and fields, API, webhooks, automations	Sales via WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and telephony
Telephony, SMS, campaigns	None built in, connected via integrations	Telephony integrations
Email, calendar, import	Google and Microsoft, CSV import, kanban and table views	Check the feature set with a Kazakhstan partner
Who implements it	You need an engineer for deployment and maintenance	Many Kazakhstan integrators; implementation is paid separately from licenses

Twenty fits IT companies whose sales happen through meetings, email and demos and whose business requires its own entities: projects, subscriptions, licenses. It can be deployed on a server in Kazakhstan and connected to billing and a tracker via the API. A detailed look at its capabilities and limitations is in our Twenty CRM review.

amoCRM fits when most customers come in through messengers and calls, and you need a ready-made cloud system and a quick start without your own engineer. In Kazakhstan, it’s sold through partners; check terms and pricing with them.

We put together a comparison across ten criteria and a scenario for moving from one system to the other in Twenty or amoCRM.

How to choose a CRM: six questions

Don’t start with a catalog of systems and demos. First answer six questions, and the list of candidates will shrink to one or two.

1. How does your sale work? Write down the stages from request to payment and the criteria for moving between them. Without this, any CRM will be configured by guesswork.
2. Where do customers come from? Website, WhatsApp, Telegram, calls, partners. If half your sales happen in messengers, integration with them is a must.
3. Where must data be stored? If there’s a requirement to keep the database in Kazakhstan, or clients from regulated industries ask about it, you need your own server.
4. Which entities do you need besides deals? Projects, subscriptions, support contracts. If standard contacts and deals aren’t enough, you need a system with custom objects.
5. What should the CRM be connected to? Website, email, calendar, billing, task tracker. Check the API and ready-made integrations before buying.
6. Who will administer the system a year from now? If there’s no engineer and won’t be one, a cloud system with a local integrator is more reliable.

After answering, run a pilot: move 20–30 real deals, work with one sales team for two weeks and see where the system helps and where it gets in the way.

Common implementation mistakes

Buying a system before describing the process. A CRM repeats the process built into it. If there’s no process, you get an expensive spreadsheet.

Too many required fields. A manager who has to fill in twenty fields for one deal will start running sales around the system. Five to seven required fields are enough at the start.

A parallel life in WhatsApp. If conversations with a customer don’t make it into the CRM, the history is incomplete, and within a month the system stops being the source of truth.

Management doesn’t use the reports. When the planning meeting runs on what managers say rather than on the CRM pipeline, the team quickly realizes that filling in the system is optional.

Importing all the junk from old spreadsheets. Clean up duplicates and dead contacts before import. Otherwise the first weeks will go into sorting out old data.

No system owner. A CRM needs a person responsible for settings, permissions and data quality. Without one, the system degrades within six months.

We described a step-by-step plan that avoids these mistakes in our article on how to implement a CRM in an IT company in four weeks.

How we do it

We start with a diagnostic: together with the head of sales, we describe the pipeline, channels, required fields and data requirements. Based on that, we choose a system, Twenty or amoCRM, and launch a pilot with one team on real deals. Once the pipeline works and managers keep all their conversations in it, we connect integrations with the website, messengers and task tracker and move everyone else over.

Details on the process and the result are on our service page for Twenty and amoCRM implementation.

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Sources. Twenty CRM: twenty.com and GitHub repository. amoCRM: amocrm.ru.

Terms in plain words

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

A system for tracking customers, deals and communication history. It helps you avoid losing requests and see where sales get stuck.

Sales pipeline

The sequence of stages a deal goes through, from request to payment. It shows how many deals are at each stage and where they get lost.

Lead

A potential customer who has shown interest: submitted a request, written or called. A lead becomes a deal once a real need is confirmed.

Self-hosted

A setup where the system runs on the company's server or with a hosting provider of its choice rather than in the vendor's cloud. It lets you store the customer database in Kazakhstan.

Open source

Software with publicly available source code that can be installed and modified for free. Twenty is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license.

API

A programming interface through which one system exchanges data with another. It's needed to connect a CRM with a website, billing or a task tracker without manual transfer.

Webhook

An automatic notification one system sends to another when an event happens, for example when a deal changes stage. The foundation of simple integrations.

Custom objects

Your own entities in a CRM beyond the standard contacts and deals, such as projects, subscriptions or licenses. They let you describe an IT company's business as it actually is.