CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and project management are closely interconnected disciplines that enable businesses to manage their operations and projects effectively. It helps sales, project, and customer service teams collaborate to provide business customers with the required pre and post-sales services.
Additionally, with a project management CRM, relevant information regarding projects, products,
customers, and individual tasks are readily available for teams to foster better coordination and communication.
Organizations have been able to adopt a customer-centric approach by integrating CRM with project management. This helps businesses collect customer data, such as history, preferences, interactions, and more, which enables them to tailor deliverables according to specific customer needs.
In this article, we will learn about the seven best CRM with project management tools businesses can use for efficient resource allocation and project management.
What is CRM with Project Management?
CRM with project management integrates CRM software and project management tools to manage customer interactions and relationships, as well as project planning, execution, and monitoring. A project management system built on a CRM platform enables businesses to understand project workflows and individual tasks tailored to the customer’s specific needs.
CRMs’ primary task is tracking user information, improving customer service, and managing the sales pipeline. This provides the business with a centralized database that stores customer information, communication logs, preferences, and other relevant data. The business can then effectively engage with its customers and focus on building long-term relationships.
In contrast, project management tools focus on facilitating the planning, organizing, execution, and improvement of projects. It defines project goals, allocates resources, sets deadlines, creates to-do lists, tracks progress, and more, ensuring quality project outcomes.
7 Best CRM with Project Management
The following are the seven best CRM with project management:
1. Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the most popular cloud-based CRM platforms that help organizations manage their customer data, track performance metrics, and automate sales processes all under a single platform. It is suitable for all business sizes, but is particularly well-suited for small business owners due to its ease of use and seamless navigation.
The integrated platform connects service, sales, marketing, e-commerce, and all other business segments to deliver the best possible service to users.
One of its project management solutions, TaskRay, is used by businesses for post-sale processes, including implementations, onboarding, installations, and more. Hence, with the help of TaskRay, Businesses can assign the correct people for the right job at the required time. The platform ties all information within the app to an existing Salesforce account, and managers can visualize this data in various modes, including Kanban, Gantt chart, and more.
What makes Salesforce stand out from its competitors?
- Its app builder platform helps users build mobile solutions catering to CRM project management
- It offers user-friendly pipeline management at no additional costÂ
- Offers contact management, lead management, and opportunity tracking
- Automates processes for multiple users through AI with their Flow OrchestrationÂ
- Custom reports for each userÂ
- Packages start at only 25 USD per month per user
Click here to visit Salesforce
 2. Monday CRM
Monday.com’s sales CRM solution allows different teams within a business to manage work and collaborate. The platform comes equipped with multiple tools that manage contacts, leads, and pipelines, as well as create customer projects, facilitate customer support communication, and manage marketing campaigns, among other features. A CRM project management solution aligns teams, projects, and support systems to provide individuals with real-time updates on project progress.
The platform offers online video tutorials to help businesses align their CRM and project management systems. It also comes with guides to easily set up a wide variety of integrations, making almost all tasks possible within a single dashboard.
It boasts one of the strongest dashboards on the market, featuring over 50 columns that combine folders and boards. This helps businesses manage many groups and leads, and segregate between qualified and disqualified leads.
What makes monday.com stand out from its competitors:
- It comes with pre-configured workflows that help in aligning team members and customersÂ
- New client onboarding, sales requests, and account tracking can all be made with a single click
- It comes with a visual board that has color-coordinated tabs to segregate and track each task easilyÂ
- It comes with task management prioritization tools
- It has a scheduling tool that allows team members to schedule each task at a later date/timeÂ
- It comes with robust automationÂ
- The CRM feature is a part of Monday.com’s base package, starting at 8 USD per user per monthÂ
Click here to visit monday.com
3. Zoho CRM
Zoho’s CRM tool caters to businesses of all sizes across various industries, providing robust analytics, automation, and process tracking. It includes a free project module with the Professional and Enterprise editions, giving access to all project management tools.
From Gantt charts to setting milestones, you can access Kanban boards and create new projects from customers’ accounts. This gives your business better visibility in front of the customer’s eyes. Zoho also offers one of the strongest customizations in the market, allowing users to work with as many add-ons as they may like.
Its lead management feature helps businesses find sales pipelines with card scanners, web forms, website tracking, and more. Live chat, distributing channels, and social media integrations are some of the many sub-features that come with this. Its AI-powered sales assistant efficiently predicts the best contact timings, urgent emails, and other relevant statistics.
What makes Zoho stand out from its competitors?
- It comes with analytical widgets like KPIs, funnels, and more
- An in-depth report feature that filters data based on name, deal stage, time, and other criteria.Â
- Creates customizable sales workflows
- It comes with a SalesSignals tool; users receive notifications at every actionable stageÂ
- Starts at USD 14 per month per user
4. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM comes with a free base platform that works well for both start-ups and enterprise-level businesses. However, sales process automation and project management solutions come at a cost, with multiple paid plans available. These features help businesses track customer interactions, project analysis, project management, and more with over 1,000 integrations.
The platform has a seamless communication system with robust ticketing and live chat options. This has improved customer satisfaction with the after-sales service over the years. It comes with several self-service options that allow business users to create responses directing specific outcomes.
What makes HubSpot CRM stand out from its competitors?
- Its customizable reporting system helps businesses track their KPIs
- It offers a segmentation feature that allows businesses to segment leads based on industry
- Its lead scoring system will enable users to prioritize leads as per their potential valueÂ
- It has a simple user interface, which is easy to navigateÂ
- The platform can be customized end-to-end because of the wide variety of integrationsÂ
- The plans start at USD 50 per month per 1000 contracts with a 14-day free trialÂ
Click here to visit HubSpot CRM
5. ClickUp
ClickUp, as a project management tool, is relatively new compared to the other names, but it suits small businesses the most. It enables visual management of accounts, emails, customer relationships, project progress, and more.
It offers multiple views, including boards, lists, and descriptions, which clearly outline the tasks to be completed. Custom status workflows help with account pipelines, and users can also utilize custom dashboards on ClickUp to analyze data about their customers.
ClickUp enables users to integrate their email with the platform, centralizing tasks for seamless work organization. Team collaboration with ClickUp becomes easy, as project updates, communication, onboarding, and task management are all done through a single window, making the process hassle-free. The all-in-one productivity tool is ideal for teams of five or more, offering a range of features including documents, goals, whiteboards, chats, and more, for seamless collaboration.
What sets ClickUp apart from its competitors?
- It offers over 1,000 native integrations with Dropbox, G-Suite, and more
- It comes with a free plan that includes several useful featuresÂ
- Offers real-time reportingÂ
- Maps, calendars, and everything else on ClickUp are highly customizable with pre-installed templatesÂ
- Allows users to create custom fields, workflows, views, boards, and moreÂ
- It is one of the cheapest tools on the market that starts at only USD 5 per month per user
6. Insightly
Insightly is best known for helping small companies scale up quickly with a flexible CRM and project management tool. If you are a team of only two people, you do not have to pay anything to use these features on Insightly. Hence, the platform is genuinely beneficial for early-stage start-ups or solo entrepreneurs. It comes with a pipeline- and milestone-focused view, which can be easily switched between.
Its recurring task feature also allows users to set multiple task alerts that recur at regular intervals. This ensures regular check-ups are happening around the tasks and nothing goes missing. On the other hand, project status reports can also be easily generated through the platform with just a few clicks.
If you are working with Insightly’s pipeline management tool. You can use collaboration tools with people across the globe without any additional hassle. Multiple pipelines, workflows, and tasks can be streamlined simultaneously with the platform, bringing all business teams together for specific projects.
What sets Insightly apart from its competitors?
- It comes with dashboards that are easily customizable as per business needs
- It has a strong segmentation of roles, enabling businesses to distribute tasks seamlessly
- Its record-linking system provides businesses with a better system for managing customer relationships
- Personal dashboards can be built by as many team members as requiredÂ
- It comes with AI predictive tools to create specific items for specific projects, triggering sales actions
- Insightly’s KPIs and tracking metrics are highly customizableÂ
- It has custom validation rules, workflow automation, and dynamic page layouts as handy featuresÂ
- For over two people in a team, the price starts at USD 29 per month per user
Let’s now move to the last best CRM with project management software.
7. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is one of the simplest tools to merge CRM with project management. It suits businesses of all sizes, but is particularly well-suited for small businesses. With Pipedrive, users can manage their leads, visualize workflows, and track contacts without hassle. In its Enterprise plan, users receive notifications about suspicious logins and potential data leaks.
Pipedrive offers pre-designed email templates, signatures, email scheduling, email tracking, click rates, two-way email sync, video call scheduling, and more. However, these features are only available in plans at or above the Advanced level. The basic plan offers essential features that any new business can utilize.
If you need an intuitive tool for lead management, Pipedrive has a lot to offer – from sales pipelines, deal management, and app integrations to a 14-day free trial.
- It is the easiest tool to set up and use
- It comes with data visualization features that make all the other work even easier to understand
- Critical tasks can be highlighted on the dashboard for priority
- Its drag-and-drop interface makes customizing dashboards easy
- The fields and pipelines are both customizable, optimizing the existing workflow without hassle
- It has a mobile app that allows businesses to engage with their customers even on the go
- The platform itself is multilingual
- Its communication tracking ensures that all your teams are connected at all timesÂ
- It comes with a 14-day free trial and then costs USD 9.90 per user per monthÂ
Conclusion
A CRM system integrated with project management features intelligently manages customer information and data, capturing the number of leads generated. This ensures that the business is always aware of potential customers in the market and helps businesses convert them into actual customers.
The top 7 CRM project management tools we have discussed will help businesses of all sizes to enhance their customer service, manage sales pipelines, customize workflows, and support sales teams end-to-end.
Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase after clicking. Please understand that I recommend these resources because they are useful, not just because of my commissions. Please do not purchase unless you need the materials to achieve your goals. Read the disclaimer.
I am Mohammad Fahad Usmani, B.E. PMP, PMI-RMP. I have been blogging on project management topics since 2011. To date, thousands of professionals have passed the PMP exam using my resources.
