CRM System Design & Development (Case Study)

Project Plan

Task

Redesign and develop a custom CRM application

Team

Product Manager, UX Researcher, Product Designer, UX/UI Designer, Business Analyst, 3 Back-end and 2 Front-end developers, QA

Duration

9 month

Scope

76 CRM screens + adaptive versions

Overview

Inventor is an international network of out-of-school educational institutions that help children develop programming, engineering, and project-thinking skills from a young age.

We partnered with Inventor to design and develop a new, more effective CRM system. The greatest challenge our team faced was to make it intuitive enough for kids, their parents, and teachers to use it with no effort.

Our team has delivered a web customer relationship management application that collects all the necessary data for teachers, students, and parents.

Deliverables

Product Design
Product Development
CRM Design
Animation
Illustrations

Results

Limeup delivered a tailored CRM solution to support Inventor’s rapid global expansion. Designed for educational institutions, the platform helps manage courses, enrollments, tuition payments, scholarships, and communication. The CRM’s intuitive UX ensured fast adoption. Around 98% of users (including educators, parents, and admins) onboarded without formal training. Tasks like scheduling, reporting, and messaging became faster and easier.

Teachers reported a 40% drop in administrative workload after rollout. By reducing repetitive tasks, the system gave educators more time to focus on students. Built to scale, the platform now supports 2,000+ daily sessions and manages over 10,000 student records. It also unifies data across 50+ school branches under one reliable system.

Student Progress

Schedule

Clients

Employees

Student Profile details

Finances equipment

Student Progress

Schedule

Clients

Employees

Student Profile

Finances

Discovery Phase

The client approached us with an existent CRM that worked poorly and did not cover the needs of a rapidly growing network of schools.

To deliver the best results, we needed to design the CRM system according to the precise users’ needs. We conducted extensive user research and learned about the solutions existent on the market. Our designers needed to find the balance between collecting the most relevant information and making the system simple enough so that non-experienced users could access it without effort.

Information Architecture

To ensure the solution is easy to navigate so that everyone can find their way across tabs, we considered our research on user preferences and behavior. As a result, we placed core settings and tabs on the left side, dividing them into categories of “Menu” and “Support,” allowing smooth interactions.

Modular architecture has become a perfect option for independent and strong web and mobile platforms with the usage of NestJS and GraphQL. Our experienced specialists used all the strengths of the modular type, from easy integrations to flexibility and easier scaling.

Information Architecture

Technologies We Used

We assembled a robust technical foundation to keep the user experience smooth, even as the platform scales to support growing educational networks.

Front-end

Vue.js

Backend

Django

WebSockets

Celery

Data

PostgreSQL

Redis

Infrastructure

AWS

Docker

Security

Sensitive student and staff data is shielded by advanced security protocols, developed in line with international standards and education-sector best practices.

Email-based authentication

with username/password and planned support for two-factor authentication (2FA).

GDPR-compliant personal data protection

including in-database encryption, data masking, and access audit logs.

Role-based access control (RBAC)

with granular permissions tailored to administrators, teachers, parents, and students.

Designed with global compliance in mind

including GDPR, COPPA, and FERPA, to support operations across different regions and user privacy expectations.

Discuss your idea with our experts to define the perfect solution for your needs.

Platon Tsybulskiy

CTO

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User persona

Math teacher

Age:46

Status:Married

Location:Worcester

Practical

Patient

Reading

Hardworking

Biography

is a math teacher at an after-school program. She has 2 grown children of her own, so she loves her job and feels like she was born to do it. Every day spends hours planning lessons for her students. She believes that a motivating approach to learning is essential for students' development. wants to be able to interact more with her students' parents.

Personality

Loyal

Frickle

Introvert

Extravert

Analytical

Creative

Goals

Effectively plan your working time
Tracking progress of your students
Have all possible functions in one platform
Don’t spend a lot of time for paperwork

Motivation

Start planning your time
Easily find the information you need

Needs

Automation of routine processes
Easy-to-use daily schedule
A multifaceted system for assessing student progress

Frustration

Too much time spend
Not enough information of students
Inconvenient interface
Errors in product operations

Math teacher

Age:46

Status:Married

Location:Worcester

Practical

Patient

Reading

Hardworking

Biography

Personality

Loyal

Frickle

Introvert

Extravert

Analytical

Creative

Goals

Effectively plan your working time
Tracking progress of your students
Have all possible functions in one platform
Don’t spend a lot of time for paperwork

Motivation

Start planning your time
Easily find the information you need

Needs

Automation of routine processes
Easy-to-use daily schedule
A multifaceted system for assessing student progress

Frustration

Too much time spend
Not enough information of students
Inconvenient interface
Errors in product operations

User journey map

A customer journey map can be a powerful tool to help you visualize and clarify current or future states of customer experience in all stages of the customers.

	Entice	Enter	Engage	Exit	Entend
Touch Points	Word of mouth Website	Email Sign In form User profile	User profile Schedule Clients Classes Reports	Support Chat Email	Word of mouth Reviews sites

	Research	Sign Up	Invest	Achievements	Share experience
User goals	Use best education CRM	Sign up process easy	Plan your schedule efficiently Get detailed information about the student Multifaceted assess of the student progress Ability to contact the parents of student Provide reports to the school administration	Get emails about updates Get support 24/7 Get promo and reward	Share my impressions of the site Gain benefits
User questions	How can I solve my problem? What are the features?	How can I login easy? How can I protect personal information?	How can I plan my time? How can I view students progress and assess their work? How can I contact the student's parents? How to provide reports for school admins quickly?	How can I find out about updates and new features? How can I get support?	What are the benefits of being an user?
Solutions	Reviews Content marketing	Quick login with a login and password provided by the school admin Info about protection personal information	Schedule with information about about working and free time Detailed information about the student and his/her parents Advanced system of student assessment and progress Automatic report templates Support chat 24/7	Mailing of letters Chat support 24/7	Internal system of employee evaluation and motivation

	Entice	Enter
Touch Points	Word of mouth Website	Email Sign In form User profile

	Research	Sign Up
User goals	Use best education CRM	Sign up process easy
User questions	How can I solve my problem? What are the features?	How can I login easy? How can I protect personal information?
Solutions	Reviews Content marketing	Quick login with a login and password provided by the school admin Info about protection personal information

	Engage
Touch Points	User profile Schedule Clients Classes Reports

	Invest
User goals	Plan your schedule efficiently Get detailed information about the student Multifaceted assess of the student progress Ability to contact the parents of student Provide reports to the school administration
User questions	How can I plan my time? How can I view students progress and assess their work? How can I contact the student's parents? How to provide reports for school admins quickly?
Solutions	Schedule with information about about working and free time Detailed information about the student and his/her parents Advanced system of student assessment and progress Automatic report templates Support chat 24/7

	Exit	Entend
Touch Points	Support Chat Email	Word of mouth Reviews sites

	Achievements	Share experience
User goals	Get emails about updates Get support 24/7 Get promo and reward	Share my impressions of the site Gain benefits
User questions	How can I find out about updates and new features? How can I get support?	What are the benefits of being an user?
Solutions	Mailing of letters Chat support 24/7	Internal system of employee evaluation and motivation

Functionality

To develop reliable features, we decided to go with the needs and requirements from end-users who needed an ability to manage the panels, administrate their performance, make changes in real-time mode, and more.

Student profile

The student profile gives an overview of your student’s performance in class. It contains attendance and progress updates, along with personal information like their name, address, phone number, and parents’ contacts.

Progress tracking

A critical feature that students and their parents can use to track their progress and assess which skills they’re still struggling with. This feature promotes academic growth and allows a student to get feedback from teachers in real-time. It also allows parents to see a summary of a student’s progress by week or month so they can quickly see where their child is within the course.

Tuition payment

Tuition management is a key component of a school’s CRM system. A well-implemented tuition payment feature can eliminate paperwork, streamline processes and reduce staff workload.