How to Implement a CRM in an IT Company in Four Weeks

You can implement a CRM in an IT company in four weeks if you start with the process, not the system. The first week goes to the pipeline and data model, the second to setup and import, the third to integrations and a pilot with one team, and the fourth to a company-wide launch and the rule “a deal exists only in the CRM.” Without this rule, any system turns into an archive within three months, filled in right before the sales meeting.

This article is for founders, commercial directors and heads of sales at IT companies and studios in Kazakhstan. Inside: a week-by-week plan, a six-stage pipeline with exit criteria, required fields, integrations with your website, WhatsApp and task tracker, metrics and common mistakes.

What “the CRM is implemented” means

Installing a CRM and implementing it are different things. We consider a CRM implemented when four conditions are met:

1. All new leads enter the CRM automatically or within the business day.
2. Every open deal has an owner and a next step date.
3. The manager builds forecasts and runs sales meetings using CRM data only.
4. A won deal is handed over to delivery without being retold in a chat.

If even one condition is not met, the CRM works as a reference directory, and sales still live in messengers and sales reps’ memories.

Preparation: what to decide before week one

Three decisions need to be made in advance; otherwise, four weeks will stretch into a quarter.

The CRM owner. One person inside the company who is responsible for the structure, permissions and rules. Usually this is the head of sales or the COO. A contractor can configure the system but cannot be its owner.

The system. For an IT company, the choice is most often between Twenty and amoCRM. The first is stronger in flexible data modeling, its API and hosting the database on your own server; the second is stronger in sales through messengers. A detailed comparison is in our article Twenty or amoCRM.

Scope. What goes into the first version: which departments, which pipelines, which integrations. Everything else goes on an “after launch” list. Typical candidates for this list: a second pipeline for partners, an accounting integration, telephony, complex reports for the business owners. They are useful but should not delay the launch. After a month of working in the CRM, it will become clear which of them are really needed and which only seemed important during discussions.

Week-by-week implementation plan

Week	Tasks	Outcome
1. Process	Interviews with sales, describing the pipeline, stage criteria, list of fields, roles and permissions	A document with the pipeline, fields and rules
2. Setup	Deploying or connecting the CRM, fields, stages, views, cleaning and importing the database	A working CRM with real data
3. Integrations and pilot	Website form, email, WhatsApp, link to the task tracker; pilot with 2–3 sales reps	The pilot closed real deals, plus a list of fixes
4. Launch	Fixes from the pilot, team training, reports, the “CRM only” rule, retiring old spreadsheets	The whole team works in the CRM

The import in week two is the most underestimated part. Old spreadsheets usually contain duplicates, inconsistent phone number formats and deals nobody has closed for years. Move only active customers and open deals, and keep the rest as an archive.

How to run the pilot in week three

A pilot is not a demo; it is work on real deals. Choose two or three sales reps who have live deals at different stages, and ask them to move fully into the CRM for a week. At the end of each day, spend 15 minutes with them going over what got in the way: an unnecessary field, an inconvenient view, an unclear stage, a missing report. Make fixes right away; do not save them up for the end of the week.

The criterion for a successful pilot is simple: the sales reps themselves do not want to go back to the spreadsheet, and the manager can run a sales meeting with only the CRM open. If that has not happened, do not roll out the system to everyone. It is better to spend another week fixing the process than six months fighting pushback.

During the pilot, also test the integrations on edge cases: a website inquiry from an existing customer, a WhatsApp message from a new number, a deal with two contact persons. These are exactly what break the automation in the first days after launch.

A six-stage pipeline for an IT company

Pipeline stages should describe the customer’s actions, not the sales rep’s mood. Each stage needs a verifiable exit criterion; otherwise, deals “hang” at the “negotiation” stage for months.

Stage	Criterion for moving to the next stage	Owner
1. New lead	There is a contact and a clear request; the lead is not spam or a duplicate	Sales rep
2. Qualification	The need, ballpark budget, decision-maker and timeline are confirmed	Sales rep
3. Estimate	A meeting with a technical specialist has taken place; the scope of work is defined	Presales or tech lead
4. Proposal	The commercial proposal has been sent; a discussion date is set	Sales rep
5. Negotiation	The client has confirmed their choice; work on the contract is underway	Head of sales
6. Won	The contract is signed or a prepayment has been received	Head of sales, handover to the project office

Plus a separate final status, “Lost,” with a required reason: price, timeline, chose a competitor, lost interest, not our profile. Six months later, these statistics will become one of the most useful reports.

Required fields and the “a deal exists only in the CRM” rule

There should be few required fields. Every unnecessary field lowers the quality of all the others: the sales rep starts filling them in with whatever.

A basic set for an IT company:

• Source: website, referral, partner, tender, conference, outbound sales.
• Owner: one person.
• Stage: from the pipeline above.
• Amount and currency: tenge or dollars, in separate fields.
• Next step date: without it, the deal is considered abandoned.
• Expected decision date: required from the “Proposal” stage.
• Type of work: development, support, consulting, license; required at the “Won” stage.
• Loss reason: required when closing a deal as lost.

The rule “a deal exists only in the CRM” means something simple: if a deal is not in the system, it does not exist for the company. Revenue forecasts, sales reps’ bonuses, sales meetings and handover to delivery are based only on CRM data. The manager does not discuss deals that are not in the system and does not accept reports in spreadsheets. This rule is introduced in week four and has no exceptions, including for the manager.

Roles and permissions

Even in a small company, permissions are worth thinking through before launch. A typical setup for an IT company:

• Sales rep sees and edits their own deals and sees the shared database of companies and contacts.
• Head of sales sees everything, reassigns deals, changes stages and closes deals.
• Presales and tech lead see deals at the “Estimate” and “Proposal” stages and add notes and estimates.
• Project office sees won deals and linked projects.
• CRM owner changes the structure: fields, stages, automations.

It is better to leave record deletion to the CRM owner only. An accidentally deleted company with its entire deal history has to be restored from a backup, and that is an unpleasant procedure.

Integrations: website, WhatsApp and task tracker

Three integrations are enough at the start. Others are added as needed.

Website. The inquiry form sends data to the CRM via the API or a webhook and creates a lead with its source and UTM tags. It is important to set up a notification to the owner and a duplicate check by phone and email.

WhatsApp. In amoCRM, conversations are connected out of the box. In Twenty, you need an external service for WhatsApp Business that writes messages to the card via the API. The minimal option without an integration is a link to the chat in the card and a mandatory summary of the conversation.

Task tracker. Moving a deal to the “Won” stage creates a project in Plane or Jira with the client’s details, the scope of work and a link to the deal. This removes the most painful gap in an IT company: between sales and delivery. The project manager gets not a retelling but a card: who the client is, what was sold, for how much, which agreements are recorded in the notes and who the contact person is. Feedback in the other direction is useful too: when a project is closed, the deal in the CRM gets flagged, and the sales rep sees an opportunity to upsell support. We cover how to set up this link in our article on CRM and task tracker integration.

Kazakhstan context. In Kazakhstan sales, WhatsApp is the main channel, and if the CRM does not account for it, the CRM will stay empty: sales reps will keep making deals on their phones. At the same time, a CRM with conversations and contacts is a database of personal data. Cloud CRMs, including amoCRM, store data on their own servers outside Kazakhstan. If it matters to the company to keep the database in the country, we install self-hosted Twenty on a Kazakhstan hosting provider’s server. And do not forget about bilingualism: a “language of communication” field and email templates in Russian and Kazakh save sales reps time.

Metrics after launch

For the first two months, look at discipline; after that, at effectiveness.

Discipline:

• the share of open deals with a next step date;
• the share of deals with required fields filled in;
• the share of leads that entered the CRM within the business day.

Effectiveness:

• conversion between pipeline stages;
• average time a deal spends at each stage;
• weighted pipeline value for the month and quarter;
• sources of won deals;
• loss reasons by month.

We deliberately do not give target values: they depend heavily on the market, deal size and the company’s stage. What matters is the trend, not comparison with other people’s numbers.

The weekly ritual

Metrics work only if people look at them regularly. Set up a short weekly sales meeting of 30–45 minutes that runs entirely off the CRM screen. The order: first deals without a next step, then deals that have been sitting at one stage longer than usual, then the forecast for the month. Any deal a sales rep mentions verbally but that is not in the system gets entered right at the meeting. After a month of this practice, the question “why fill in the CRM” usually disappears on its own.

Common mistakes

• Starting with choosing a system rather than with the process.
• Moving all old spreadsheets into the CRM without cleaning them.
• Making twenty fields required “just in case.”
• Launching for the whole company at once without a pilot.
• Keeping parallel spreadsheets “until everyone gets used to it.”
• Not appointing a CRM owner inside the company.

How we implement a CRM

We follow the same approach described above: a diagnostic of the sales process, a pilot with one team and scaling to the whole company. During the diagnostic, we pin down the pipeline, the data model, storage requirements and the list of integrations. The pilot runs for two to four weeks on real deals, and only after it do we bring everyone else on board and retire the old spreadsheets.

Learn more about the process and the outcome on the Twenty and amoCRM CRM implementation page.

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Sources. Twenty: twenty.com and github.com/twentyhq/twenty. amoCRM: amocrm.ru.

Terms in plain words

Lead

A potential customer who has left an inquiry or contact details but has not yet been qualified. In the pipeline, this is the first stage, where spam and duplicates are filtered out.

Sales pipeline

The sequence of stages a deal goes through from inquiry to signed contract. The article describes six, each with a verifiable exit criterion.

Qualification

The stage where you check whether a lead is worth pursuing: whether there is a real need, a ballpark budget, a decision-maker and a timeline.

Presales

A specialist who helps sales before the contract is signed: they meet with the client alongside the sales rep and estimate the scope of work.

UTM tags

Markers in a link that show which ad or platform a website visitor came from. They reach the CRM along with the inquiry and show the lead's source.

API and webhook

Ways to pass data between systems automatically: a website form creates a lead in the CRM, a won deal creates a project in the tracker. A webhook fires on an event; an API lets you read and write data.

Self-hosted

An option where the CRM runs on the company's server, for example with a Kazakhstan hosting provider. This way, the database with personal data stays in the country.

Weighted pipeline value

The total of open deals, each multiplied by its probability of winning. It gives a more realistic revenue forecast than simply adding up all deals.