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The use of multiple CRMs and/or sourcing systems

Journalist: Shekina Tuahene, Mortgage Solutions

ended 17. April 2024

I am looking speak with advisers for a Mortgage Solutions story on how technology is used.

I came across someone who said some brokers were using multiple CRMs because they were tied into the one their network recommended but preferred the capabilities of another.

I was wondering how common this was and how prevalent it was across different kinds of technologies like sourcing systems etc.

For example, I've also heard that for advisers working across the mainstream and later life sectors, they sometimes have to use two platforms to come up with one financial solution for a client.

If you do this, why? 

Is it because separate platforms do not meet your needs so it's better to use a combination?

What needs are these?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Justin Moy
Managing Director at EHF Mortgages
This is quite a common thing with many firms, no CRM has never been able to do everything, not just the mortgage work on sourcing, quotes, and collecting paperwork, but also for marketing, follow-up work, etc. Some are better at certain aspects, for me, it was always a protection against a network closing suddenly and losing the data you have worked hard to acquire.

Moving data from one to another is also hard, and expensive, so it is often cheaper to run several CRM's with old and current data and migrate as and when time allows, typically on renewal.
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Benjamin Blyth
Director at Houz Mortgages
I have built my own custom CRM using Notion - and I think things like this will be the future of CRMs and the death of the current clunky providers. Notion integrates with whatever you need it to through services like IFTTT and Zapier. It certainly streamlines the processes, allows proper automation, use of AI and is user friendly on both sides (client and colleagues). Produces the KPIs I need too.

However, I am forced to use one additional by my network. Which is tied to Windows and I'm a Mac user - so that makes it awkward. I don't use the Windows side of it and use the half-baked web version. However, the client side of it is a very poor use experience - so on top of this I pay for Smartr365! This offers a great client facing experience - but I don't really need the back office functions!

It's quite a mess and as soon as my time allows I'll build a full client facing element on Notion.

I don't need to worry about the lender integrations as none of them work particularly well!
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
Network mortgage systems often don't have the sophistication or 3rd party integration support required to manage leads effectively. I use Smartr365 as my mortgage and protection compliance system. It's decent, but isn't enough for my business needs, so I use it in conjunction with Pipedrive CRM. The latter is primarily for lead management and integrates with my website forms, voip provider, calendly, zapier and so on. There's a little duplication of data entry between the two systems but generally it works ok.