Excel is extremely popular due to its simplicity, flexibility, and versatility (among other things). Its intuitive interface allows you to enter data, create formulas, and generate charts easily, and functions such as filtering and sorting allow for basic data analysis without requiring advanced software. Many companies store customer data in Excel, not seeing the need for a dedicated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

However, as business needs become more complex, Excel’s limitations become apparent (I expand on this below and describe the problems you may encounter). At the same time, off-the-shelf systems are expensive to maintain (license costs) and often offer features your company doesn’t need. Custom software is a great solution, but it’s often associated with a long time to market and a high price. But is that really true? 

If you use the right tools, such as the low-code Mendix platform – not necessarily. Creating a professional application to support CRM processes, which will replace Excel and facilitate data management and analysis, and offer a personalized interface, can be a matter of days or weeks instead of months. Read on to find out!

Excel limitations in the context of CRM

When it comes to customer relationship management, Excel has significant limitations – particularly visible as the scope of data handled and the needs of your company begin to grow:

• Lack of advanced data control – Excel offers very basic data validation mechanisms, often insufficient for more complex business processes.
• Limited collaboration tools – Collaboration on a single file can be problematic, especially when many people try to edit it at the same time. This causes conflicts, the risk of overwriting data and loss of file consistency.
• Poor performance – Excel is not optimized for working on mobile devices and handling very large data sets. With a larger number of rows or more complex formulas, performance can drop drastically, and the risk of file corruption increases.
• No Centralized Database – Excel files are often scattered across devices or shared drives, leading to data silos and inconsistent customer information. This makes it nearly impossible to maintain a single, reliable source of truth for your team.
• Weak Security Controls – Excel lacks granular user permissions and audit trails. Sensitive customer data (like contact details or purchase history) is vulnerable to accidental deletion, unauthorized access, or breaches.

Why is a dedicated CRM solution worth it?

Implementing a dedicated CRM system allows you to centralize customer data in an optimized database, which eliminates problems with file consistency and offers real-time access to key information. Validation functions allow you to automatically verify the correctness of data – for example, whether the email address has the correct format and the phone number contains the right number of digits. This means no more problems resulting from incorrectly recorded information (and no need for manual corrections).

Another advantage of such applications is the possibility of extensive data visualization. You can easily configure dashboards and views that will provide the most important information in a clear and transparent way – which is the exact opposite of static Excel sheets. The user interface can be adapted to even the most specific needs, and the application will work equally well on a computer, tablet and phone, which enables convenient access to data from anywhere in the world.

Mendix – a quick way to a custom CRM system

One great option for companies that don’t want an off-the-shelf CRM product is to use the Mendix platform to create something more suited to their particular needs. It’s a powerful, cloud-native and AI-enhanced technology that offers great flexibility and unsurpassed time to market. In fact, creating a basic CRM application with Mendix takes literally just a few steps:

1. Generating a new application using the wizard in Mendix StudioPro.
2. Downloading the widgets listed below.
   • Excel Importer — A module that allows you to import Excel files. It adds the elements needed to load the file and lets you create a template based on which you can remap values ​​from Excel to objects in the application.
   • Mx Model Reflection — A module that adds the ability to display the contents of the database model from the level of the running application by adding a new page presenting information about all objects.
   • Community Commons — A module that allows you to work with Excel files by adding methods created in Java directly in your project’s Microflow.
3. Creating a data model that reflects the information stored in Excel such as name, age, date of birth, email, phone number, company, address or any other you might require.
4. Configuring application permissions (especially important if you want your application to work online ).
5. Building pages (Mendix makes this process relatively simple thanks to advanced low-code features such as components which you can use out of the box with a minimal amount of necessary configuration).
6. Creating logic that allows you to import data from Excel files (you can do this easily by using Data Grid and File Manager widgets).
7. Configuring a Microflow responsible for mapping data from Excel (details are available in the Excel Importer module documentation).

CRM system based on Mendix – sample application

What can be achieved by following the steps listed above? Surprisingly a lot. Here is a sample application that I created quickly just to show you that freeing a company from the limitations of Excel can be much easier than it might seem. Of course, a CRM system created based on Mendix can offer much more advanced functionalities. Here are the main features of my sample app:

• Data import from Excel forms – The system has its own PostgreSQL database but imports data from your existing Excel spreadsheets.
• Customer management – You can add new customers, edit their data (name, company, age, contact data, etc.) and easily execute any necessary actions such as data synchronisation across different platforms.

• Order management – ​​The application also allows you to manage orders placed by customers. You can view all existing orders or the purchase history of specific users.

• Searching features – There’s no need to scan through the entire customer database to find a specific person. You can use the search bar (along with advanced filters and sorting options, which are very easy to add) to find whoever you need quickly.
• User-friendly interface – Customer data can be displayed in a clear and graphically attractive form, facilitating easy access to key information. It’s also worth pointing out that Mendix allows further configuration which is not complex or time-consuming (for example, there’s no need to write your own CSS classes).

Conclusion

Switching from Excel to a dedicated CRM application is about more than just streamlining your daily work. It’s a step that allows you to organize your data, automate repetitive tasks and focus on what is really important – business development. By choosing Mendix, you gain incredible time to market and flexibility in adapting the application to your own needs – you can quickly introduce changes, test new functions and scale the system as requirements evolve. Thanks to elements such as data consistency validation or task automation, you reduce the occurrence of human errors and allow your employees to focus on strategic activities, instead of spending countless hours managing the tools themselves.

Of course, this is by no means a full tutorial, and I really need to stretch the fact that the application presented in this article isn’t a full-fledged, feature-rich solution – it’s just a sample app I made in a few hours. However, it’s entirely possible to use Mendix to make something a lot more advanced. If you’re interested in such a custom CRM system tailored to fit your specific needs, write to us at hello@pretius.com (or use the contact form) – we are an official Mendix partner with over 20 years of experience with Java (on which the platform discussed in this text is based) and extensive know-how in the field of low-code tools.

If you want to learn more about Mendix, check out some of the other articles about this technology on our blog:

1. Mendix platform 101: What is it, why is it interesting, and how much does it cost?
2. Mendix tutorial: Start making apps using a powerful low-code platform
3. Mendix React Client: Introduction and main changes compared to Dojo