Picture this: a property developer spends £2.5 million on a penthouse through your luxury estate agency. The same person is CEO of a tech startup banking with your corporate division and uses your private wealth services. Yet somehow, these three parts of your business have no idea they’re all dealing with the same client.
It’s happening everywhere, and traditional CRM just isn’t cutting it anymore.
When one size fits none
The problem is pretty straightforward. Most organisations now run multiple brands serving the same high-value clients in different contexts. Think about a financial services group with private banking, corporate banking, wealth management, and property finance. Or a luxury lifestyle company with estate agencies, property management, concierge services, and yacht charters.
Each brand needs its own specialised tools – you can’t run property viewings through the same system as yacht maintenance schedules. But here’s the kicker: it’s often the same wealthy individuals using all these services. And they expect you to know them, regardless of which brand they’re dealing with today.
Traditional CRM platforms were built for a simpler time. They assume one company, one customer journey, one neat little funnel. But that’s not how the world works anymore. Your client might enquire about property investment via email, discuss corporate lending over lunch, and book yacht charters through WhatsApp.
The platforms haven’t caught up
You’d think by 2024 the big CRM vendors would have solved this. They haven’t. Not really. Not without you spending a fortune.
Take HubSpot’s “Business Units” feature – it’s only available on their Enterprise plan, plus you need to buy an add-on at £90 per month per brand. Users report it’s “often oversold” and you can achieve similar results with creative workarounds using permissions and custom properties.
Salesforce, despite all their “Customer 360” marketing, doesn’t offer clear multi-brand functionality out of the box. Same story with Microsoft Dynamics 365 – lots of modules that can work together, but nothing that actually solves the multi-brand challenge without extensive customisation.
The consensus from businesses actually dealing with this? They either pay through the nose for enterprise add-ons that still have limitations, create Byzantine workarounds, or just give up and run separate systems.
The banking blindspot
Banks perfectly illustrate this madness. They’ll have the founder of a £50 million company as a private wealth client, managing their personal investments. The same person walks through the door as CEO seeking corporate finance, and it’s like they’ve never met.
Different systems, different relationship managers, different data. The private bank has no idea about the corporate relationship. The corporate team doesn’t know about the personal wealth. It’s not just inefficient – it’s embarrassing when you can’t even recognise your most valuable clients.
Property groups face the same challenge. Someone buying a £10 million home probably needs property management, might want to rent it out when travelling, could be interested in development opportunities. But if these are different brands or divisions, that intelligence rarely connects.
A different approach
Here’s what actually works: put a proper data warehouse at the centre of everything. Think of it as your business’s memory – one place where every customer interaction, from every brand, comes together.
Then, let each brand use the tools that work best for them. The estate agency keeps its viewing management system. The private bank keeps their wealth platform. The property management team keeps their maintenance tracker. But underneath, they’re all feeding into and pulling from that central intelligence.
The magic happens when you connect it all properly. No manual copying and pasting between systems. No CSV exports and imports. Everything flows automatically.
Getting the basics right
Of course, sharing customer data across brands raises important questions about privacy and security. But done properly, a unified approach actually improves your compliance position. You know exactly what data you have, where it came from, and what you’re allowed to do with it.
The key is building in proper controls from the start – tracking consent at a granular level, restricting access based on legitimate need, and automatically managing data retention. It’s not sexy stuff, but it’s what makes everything else possible.
From passive recording to proactive engagement
This is where things get genuinely exciting. When you have all your customer data in one place, patterns emerge that transform how you think about CRM entirely.
Traditional CRMs are essentially glorified filing cabinets – places where salespeople dutifully log calls and update deal stages. But what if your system could actually tell you what to do next? Not just remind you to follow up, but intelligently suggest that a property client’s recent corporate expansion makes them perfect for your new development opportunity. Or flag that a private banking client’s business just secured Series B funding, making it an ideal time to discuss wealth structuring.
Maybe clients who use your property management services are more likely to sell within 18 months. Perhaps there’s a correlation between corporate loan applications and personal property purchases. These insights only emerge when you connect the dots across brands.
Some private banks are already using this approach to anticipate when business owners might be considering an exit – combining signals from both personal and corporate banking relationships. That’s the shift from reactive data entry to proactive relationship building.
Making it happen
Building these systems isn’t about ripping everything out and starting again. The smartest approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Start with the data foundation. Get your warehouse and identity resolution sorted first. Then connect your existing systems one by one, enhancing rather than replacing. Pick a few specific use cases where connecting the dots will drive real value, and prove the concept before expanding.
Yes, it’s more complex than buying one big platform from one vendor. But the alternative – forcing your diverse businesses into a one-size-fits-all solution – simply doesn’t work for multi-brand reality.
The opportunity ahead
Here’s the thing: while established vendors struggle with their legacy architectures and enterprise pricing models, there’s a massive opportunity to reimagine what CRM could be. Not another system demanding data entry, but an intelligence layer that actually drives business forward.
Imagine relationship managers who spend their time building relationships instead of updating systems. Marketing teams who can orchestrate sophisticated cross-brand campaigns without wrestling with data exports. Service teams who actually know their customers’ full story.
The traditional CRM is dying, but what’s emerging is far more interesting – intelligent ecosystems that respect the complexity of modern business while providing the unified view customers expect. Systems that prompt action rather than just recording it.
The technology is ready. The question is whether businesses are ready to let go of the old way of thinking about customer relationships. For those willing to make the leap, the rewards in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and cold, hard revenue are there for the taking.
Because really, if a client is worth millions to your business across multiple brands, shouldn’t your systems be working as hard as you are to serve them?