Overview
What CRM consulting covers, and where Great Minds fits
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is where your organisation records its relationships: accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, cases and the activity around them. It drives sales forecasting, service queues and much of your management reporting, and it's usually the system other platforms read customer data from.
Great Minds is a Sydney-based systems integrator. We help you choose a CRM, implement Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, migrate data from the system you're leaving, and connect the CRM to ERP, marketing automation, service management and your website, so nobody re-keys customer data between them.
Most CRM projects start from one of four places: a team that has outgrown spreadsheets and inboxes; an older or heavily customised CRM that people work around rather than in; two CRMs left behind by a merger; or plans for AI agents, such as Salesforce Agentforce or Copilot in Dynamics 365, that need clean, connected customer data first.
Capabilities
What a CRM engagement covers
We can take a CRM from selection to adoption, or join at any stage, for example to rescue an implementation that has stalled or to connect a CRM you already run.
01CRM vendor selectionRequirements from sales, service, marketing and finance, scripted demonstrations using your own scenarios, and a five-year cost comparison covering licences, implementation, integration and support.
02CRM implementation and integrationData model, sales and service processes, automation and security configured on Salesforce or Dynamics 365, then connected to ERP, marketing, website forms and service tools.
03Data migration and clean-upAccounts, contacts, opportunities, cases and history moved from your current CRM or spreadsheets, de-duplicated and mapped, with trial migrations and reconciliation before cut-over.
04Automation, AI and adoptionLead and case routing, approvals and AI features where the data supports them, with role-based training so people use the CRM rather than work around it.Partnerships
CRM platforms we implement and connect
We implement Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, and integrate both with Atlassian, Adobe, Klaviyo, ERP and commerce platforms. Many organisations run one for CRM and the other for ERP, and connecting the two is a common part of our work.
Microsoft Dynamics 365Microsoft's CRM apps, including Sales, Customer Service and Field Service, run on Dataverse and can share records with Dynamics 365 finance and operations apps.
Salesforce Sales CloudSalesforce's sales CRM for accounts, opportunities, forecasting and automation, extended with Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Data 360 as needs grow.
KlaviyoEmail, SMS and customer profiles for ecommerce brands, connected to your CRM and online store. Great Minds is a Klaviyo Gold Advisor.How we deliver
A CRM project, from discovery to adoption
Workshops with sales, service, marketing and finance to map lead to cash and case to resolution, the data model, roles and permissions, and the reports leaders rely on. We agree the design, and what stays out of scope, before anything is configured.
The CRM is built in short iterations with demonstrations to the people who will use it. Integrations follow the design: quotes, orders and invoices with ERP, leads from website forms, campaigns with marketing automation, and single sign-on. AI agents do much of the repetitive configuration and data-mapping work; our consultants own the design and sign off every change.
Trial migrations of accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, files and activity history, with de-duplication and reconciliation reports, so you know what has moved before the final cut-over.
Role-based training, a staged go-live and hypercare, then adoption reporting so you can see who is using the CRM and where they aren't. For a 100-person Hong Kong law firm, we implemented Salesforce in phases over six months to avoid disrupting casework. Our article on Salesforce training and user adoption covers what makes the difference.
Australian considerations
What Australian organisations need to check
Your CRM holds more personal information than almost any other system, so the Australian Privacy Principles apply to its design. APP 11 covers security and deleting or de-identifying records you no longer need, APP 12 and APP 13 cover giving people access to their information and correcting it, and APP 7 covers direct marketing opt-outs, which matters when the CRM supplies your marketing lists.
Check where your CRM data is hosted. Microsoft runs the Dynamics 365 CRM apps for Australian tenants in its Australia East and Australia Southeast regions. Salesforce offers Hyperforce on AWS in Australia, but notes that its Einstein AI features can process data outside the country. For APRA-regulated entities, a CRM that supports a critical operation may bring the vendor within CPS 230's material service provider requirements, and its security controls within CPS 234.
From 10 December 2026, privacy policies must disclose decisions made or substantially supported by computer programs that significantly affect people. Ranking B2B sales leads is unlikely to be caught; using the same scoring to decide who gets a payment plan or a service upgrade may be. Our guide to automated decisions and the Privacy Act explains the test.
FAQ
CRM questions
Should we choose Salesforce or Dynamics 365?
Both are mature enterprise CRMs. Dynamics 365 usually suits organisations standardised on Microsoft 365, or planning Dynamics 365 for ERP, because the apps share Dataverse. Salesforce suits organisations that want its breadth of sales, service and marketing products and its partner ecosystem. We compare them against your own scenarios and five-year costs rather than feature lists.
How long does a CRM implementation take?
It depends on scope, data quality and integrations. A focused sales CRM for one team is a much smaller project than a multi-team rollout with service, data migration and ERP integration. For one law firm we phased a Salesforce implementation over six months. We give you a scoped plan and price before work starts.
Can you migrate our data from our current CRM?
Yes, including from spreadsheets, older CRMs and between Salesforce and Dynamics 365. We run trial migrations, de-duplicate records and reconcile counts before cut-over, and we redesign processes rather than copying old workarounds across.
Should customer data live in the CRM or the ERP?
Usually both hold customer records, so the design has to say which system owns each field. A common pattern is that the CRM owns contacts, relationships and the sales pipeline, the ERP owns billing, credit terms and invoices, and an integration keeps the shared fields in step.
Do we need a customer data platform as well as a CRM?
Not always. A CRM can be the hub for a single customer view when relationships are managed by people and you have a few source systems. A customer data platform earns its cost when you have high volumes of behavioural data and several channels to activate.
How do we get people to actually use the CRM?
Design it around the work people already do, cut the fields and steps nobody needs, and make it the only place to find the information they want, such as forecasts, commissions or case history. Then train by role and watch adoption reports after go-live, fixing what people avoid.
People
CRM consultants, solution architects and integration specialists
Our CRM consultants work with sales, service, marketing and finance teams to design processes and data models, then build, migrate and integrate the platform. They stay accountable for the result, with AI agents taking on repetitive configuration and data-mapping work under their review.
Case studies
CRM projects in practice
For a 100-person Hong Kong law firm we centralised client data in Salesforce Sales Cloud and automated document generation, approvals and task assignment. For Montgomery Investment Management we delivered an integrated email program on Marketo and Salesforce for two new global equity funds.
4x faster campaign execution, 1M+ contacts migratedSalesforce Marketing Cloud to Klaviyo migration with 1M+ email marketing recipientsUnlocking personalised growth at scale through Klaviyo implementation and data migration
Marketo and Salesforce connected for 2 fund launchesMarketo and Salesforce, connected for a global fund launchMarketo and Salesforce integrated into one marketing automation engine, so Montgomery could launch two global equity funds to the right investors at the right time.
A 100-person firm running on Salesforce Sales CloudSalesforce CRM implementation for Hong Kong law firmDigital transformative journey of a 100-person law firm in Hong Kong powered by Salesforce Sales Cloud.Insights
Guides to CRM platforms
Salesforce for fund managers: investor relations, distribution and DDOWhich Salesforce products fit, modelling advisers, platforms and investors, registry integration, DDO and AML/CTF support, and AI.
Salesforce training and user adoption: a practical guideDesign for adoption, role-based training on realistic data, in-app guidance, measuring real adoption and preparing users for Agentforce.
Agentic AI in systems integration: what it does and how to govern itWhat AI agents do in integration projects and what people still own, MCP, governance, why projects fail, and a real result.