Choosing an industry pack and changing it later
How a business picks one of the twenty Industry CRM packs, what each pack sets up, and what happens if it changes industry later or stops paying.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
A general-purpose CRM asks you to bend your business to fit it. Your matters, jobs, listings or bookings become "deals", your clients, patients or guests become "contacts", and the steps that make your work what it is live in somebody's head because the software has nowhere to put them.
Achekam's Industry CRM takes the opposite approach. When a business switches it on, it chooses an industry, and the CRM arrives already speaking that industry's language, with records, workflows and accounts built for it. That makes the choice of pack the most important decision in setting it up. This article explains what the choice involves, what each pack gives you, and what happens if circumstances change.
Business workspaces only
The Industry CRM is for business workspaces. An accounting firm's own workspace does not see it. A firm can still work in a client's Industry CRM when it is appointed to that client's books, but the CRM itself belongs to the business.
The twenty packs
When the Industry CRM is switched on, the business picks one of twenty industries, each with its own pack:
Legal services; Retail & e-commerce; SaaS & B2B tech; Real estate; Financial services & wealth; Healthcare & clinics; Insurance; Hospitality & hotels; Higher education & EdTech; Manufacturing & distribution; Construction & contracting; Automotive; Consulting & professional services; Travel & tourism; Telecommunications; Non-profit & fundraising; Fitness, wellness & spas; Recruiting & staffing; Events & trade shows; Logistics & freight.
There is one pack per workspace. If your business genuinely spans two industries, choose the pack that matches the work your customers pay you for most, and the records your team will use every day.
What a pack sets up
Each pack sets the words the screens use, its record types, pipelines, workflows, document requests, documents to sign, reminders, starter catalogue, ledger accounts and home-page counts. If you are new to CRM software, Investopedia's guide to customer relationship management explains the sales, service and forecasting processes a CRM covers and the types of CRM technology businesses use.
The words matter more than they might seem. The Legal services pack calls customers Clients and its records Matters. The Healthcare pack calls customers Patients. The Non-profit pack calls them Supporters, and the Hospitality pack calls them Guests. Staff who see their own vocabulary use the system; staff who see "deals" and "contacts" work around it.
The records matter too. A construction pack keeps jobs, estimates and change orders; a recruitment pack keeps vacancies, candidates and placements; a travel pack keeps bookings and traveller profiles. Each comes with workflows for the steps that industry repeats, so the right tasks, document requests and signatures appear at the right time.
A starter catalogue without prices
Every pack brings a starter catalogue of the things businesses in that industry typically sell. No item in any pack's catalogue carries a price. Your prices depend on your market, your costs and your customers, and a figure suggested by software would only be a guess, so the business sets its own.
Before your first quotation, go through the catalogue, price the items you sell, and leave aside the ones you do not.
Starter contract wording to review
Packs include the agreements their industry commonly uses, such as a legal mandate and fee agreement, a recruiter's terms of business, a gym's membership agreement or a hotel's booking terms for groups. Every contract or agreement in the packs is marked as starter wording that the business must review before use.
Treat that wording as a first draft. Have it reviewed by someone who knows your industry and your country's law, adapt it to how you actually work, and use your reviewed version from the first live customer.
Changing industry later
Businesses change. A consultancy starts placing contractors; a retailer becomes mainly a wholesaler. If a business switches to another industry later, every record is kept.
Each record keeps the pack it was made under, so the history stays intact and readable in the terms it was created with, while new work follows the new pack. Only the business's own administrator can switch the Industry CRM on or change industry, so a change of pack is a deliberate decision, not something a staff member or an outside firm can do on a whim.
If the subscription lapses
If a business's Industry CRM subscription lapses, its records stay readable and exportable but cannot be changed. Nothing is deleted, and the business can still see and take out what it built up. It simply cannot add to it or change it until the subscription is active again.
That is worth knowing before you commit years of customer history to any system: your records remain yours to read and export even if you stop paying.
Choosing well: a short checklist
- List what your customers pay you for, and which kind of work brings most of the revenue.
- Read the descriptions of the one or two packs that fit, and compare their records with how your team actually works.
- Check the pack's words: would your staff recognise them?
- Plan who will price the catalogue and review the starter wording.
- Agree who your administrator is, since only they can switch the CRM on or change the pack.
If your accountant works in your books, see your accounting firm inside your Industry CRM. For an example of a pack built carefully around what it must not do, read a health declaration, not a medical record, and if you are considering a change of accountant, changing accountants: your books stay with you.
Write down, in one sentence, what your business sells and to whom. The pack that fits that sentence is usually the right one.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
