Research report · 2026
The State of CRM in UK Manufacturing
How British manufacturers really run sales, and what it is costing them.
- Where the sales pipeline actually lives in UK manufacturers
- The four gaps that show up again and again, and what they cost
- What the best-run businesses do differently, and where to start
64%
are selling on memory, not on a system
82%
have no single view of their sales pipeline
91%
would lose critical knowledge if one person left
From in-depth interviews with UK manufacturers, scored across five areas of CRM maturity.
What the research found
These are capable, profitable businesses, most of them growing. The commercial side is held together by memory and individual effort rather than anything the business owns.
Nobody can see what is coming.
The ERP knows what has been built and invoiced. What is about to be won lives in one person's head.
The business remembers through people, not systems.
Who the buyer is, what was promised, why the last quote was lost. When someone leaves, it leaves with them.
Quotes and follow-ups leak.
Quotes go out and are never chased because someone got busy. Nobody is counting what that costs.
Nobody measures the sale itself.
Every manufacturer knows roughly how long a sale takes. None had it recorded anywhere.
Five areas, one score
Every business in the study was scored out of 100 across five areas. The questions ask what actually happens, not what software is installed. Here is the industry average in each area.
The report breaks down each area, shows what good looks like, and sets out a sensible order to tackle it in.
“I've got an idea in my head, but nothing formal anywhere.”
A manufacturer, asked where the forward view of their business lives
The best performers did not have bigger budgets
What separates them is that someone decided how the business would remember its customers, and made the systems serve that decision. The report shows how.