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CRM business case builder.Make the case to your boss.

Work out what a recruitment CRM would save your team in hours and billings, set it against the cost, and turn it into a one-page business case you can send to the person who signs off.

The case

Your team

$

Salary, commission and employer costs

$

Hours per recruiter, per week, on

hours
hours
hours
hours
%

Of those hours

%

Sourcing, calls, client work

Costs

$

ATS, spreadsheets, add-ons

$

Longlist Growth is $47 (USD), billed annually

hours
$

Longlist migrates your data free

Your details

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YOUR BUSINESS CASE

Business case · 16 October 2026

A recruitment CRM for our agency

Moving our 5 recruiters onto a recruitment CRM would save about 3 hours a week each, 690 hours a year across the team. With 50% of that time going back into billing work, that’s around $46,875 in extra billings a year, while spending $2,580 a year less on software. It pays back in under a month.

Net benefit, every year

$65,580After software costs

First year, after setup

$64,645$935 of training and migration

Return on the CRM

16.8×Value created ÷ first-year cost

Where the time goes, per recruiter a week

TaskNowSaved
Formatting and sending CVs1.5 h0.8 h
Logging calls, emails and notes2 h1 h
Finding people already in the database1.5 h0.8 h
Writing follow-up emails1 h0.5 h

The numbers, per year

Extra billings from time saved$46,875
Other time saved, at cost$16,125
Software today$5,400
Software with the new CRM$2,820

How we’d make the move safely

  • Test it with a 14-day free trial before committing.
  • Check a sample export from our current system migrates cleanly, then move everything.
  • Train the team for 4 hours each, and start with one desk if we want to be careful.
  • Review the time saved after the first month against this case.

Assumes 50% of the listed admin is saved, 46 working weeks a year and 40 hours a week. The cost of time saved uses $47 an hour.

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How the business case is worked out.

Hours saved are the weekly admin hours you enter for each task, × the share a CRM would save, × recruiters, × working weeks.

Extra billings value the share of saved time that goes back into billing work at what a recruiter bills per hour (annual billings ÷ hours worked a year). The rest of the saved time is valued at what a recruiter costs per hour.

Net benefit is those two together, less the change in software cost. The first year also takes off the one-off cost of training time and migration. Payback is how many months of net benefit cover that one-off cost.

LET’S CLEAR A FEW THINGS UP

Questions recruiters ask.

Talk to our team
How do I convince my boss to buy a recruitment CRM?

Show the cost of doing nothing. Most of the case is time: hours each recruiter spends every week formatting CVs, logging activity, searching for people already in the database and writing follow-ups. Put a number on those hours, show what happens if some of them go back into billing work, and set that against what the software costs. Then make the move feel safe with a trial and a migration plan.

Where do the time savings come from?

From the four tasks in the calculator, which a recruitment CRM automates or shortens: CV formatting from templates, activity logged from email and calls, search across everything you’ve already collected, and email sequences that follow up on their own. Use your own estimates of the hours, and a cautious share for how much would be saved.

Why split saved time between billing and other work?

Not every hour saved turns into billings. The share you set as going back into billing work is valued at what a recruiter bills per hour; the rest is valued at what a recruiter costs per hour. Keeping the share modest makes the case harder to argue with.

What does moving to Longlist cost?

Longlist starts at $47 per user a month on the Growth plan, billed annually, and includes free data migration and a 14-day free trial. See pricing for every plan.

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