Every CRM stores a lead. The question for an equipment business is what happens after the order: the invoice, the installation, the contract and the service call. This page compares the two honestly, including the cases where a generic CRM is the right answer.
A generic CRM is for a team whose job ends when the order is won. It stores leads, contacts, companies, deals and activities, and it is genuinely good at that. If you sell and hand over, with no installation, no warranty obligation and no service contract, a generic CRM is enough and anything heavier is wasted.
A medical-equipment CRM is for a business whose relationship with the customer starts at the order rather than ending there. The unit gets installed and carries a serial number, the warranty runs out, an AMC or CMC is offered, the machine breaks, an engineer is dispatched, a spare part is consumed, a service invoice follows and the contract comes up for renewal. That loop is the business, and a generic CRM has no place to hold it.
The core objects are lead, contact, account, opportunity and activity. Pipelines are configurable, reports are good, and email and calendar integrations are mature. What you cannot easily create is a serial-numbered asset that belongs to a customer, has a warranty end date, carries a contract, accumulates a service history and consumes spare parts. People try, and it becomes a custom build that nobody maintains once the person who configured it leaves.
The same pipeline, plus the objects this trade runs on. Hospital and clinic accounts with the decision-makers named, field visits with a GPS check-in, territory and target management. Then a GST quotation that becomes a sales order, a tax invoice with CGST, SGST and IGST treatment, a delivery challan, an e-invoice and an e-way bill. Then the installed-base register: which unit went where, under what warranty, on which contract. Then service: breakdown intake, dispatch, a mobile job card with photo proof, and the spare part that drops out of stock when it is used.
Most general-purpose CRMs are built for markets where the invoice is a downstream accounting event. In India the quotation, the order and the invoice are the same conversation, and the tax treatment changes the number the buyer sees. When billing lives outside the CRM, somebody re-keys the quotation and the two disagree by quarter end. GST billing inside the platform removes that step.
Ask whether you owe the customer anything after the delivery note is signed. If the answer is no, buy the generic CRM with the best interface, because you will use it every day and the rest is overhead. A trading business that ships boxes, a consultancy selling projects, a dealer who passes service back to the manufacturer: all are fine on a general-purpose tool.
If the answer is yes, the question becomes where that obligation is recorded. In most equipment businesses it lives in a service engineer's head, a WhatsApp group and one spreadsheet. That becomes a software problem the moment a contract lapses unnoticed, or a machine is serviced under a warranty that expired last year.
Before choosing, ask any vendor to run one enquiry through to a renewal on your own data. A generic CRM will stop at closed-won. Compare also CRM against ERP if somebody has quoted you an ERP for the same problem.
Yes, when the business is purely sales: you quote, you deliver, and service is the manufacturer's obligation rather than yours. In that case a generic CRM with good reporting is the right tool and an industry platform would sit unused.
The installed base. Once every delivered unit has a record with a warranty date, a contract and a service history, renewals, preventive maintenance, dispatch and spares all become automatic consequences rather than separate tasks.
You can, and it usually works for a year. The cost appears later as unmaintained custom objects, automations nobody understands, and a mobile experience field staff avoid.
In Aura Business, yes. The quotation becomes a sales order and a tax invoice with CGST, SGST or IGST, gapless numbering, delivery challan, e-invoice IRN and QR, and e-way bill, with an export to your accounting package.
Generic CRMs are usually priced per user each month, which penalises putting field staff on the system. Aura Business is priced by module tier with unlimited users, so technicians and reps cost nothing extra to add.
Yes. The field app supports offline working, so a job card, photos and a customer signature can be captured at a site with no signal and sync when the engineer is back in coverage. See field service software.
Pipeline, visits and accounts.
For manufacturers and OEM sales.
Every unit, warranty and contract.
The plain-language guide.
When an ERP is genuinely right.
Every side-by-side in one place.
How pricing changes behaviour.
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