FocusNow AI Club, meet-up #6 – 30 September 2026.
The sixth session was a show-and-tell. Three of us built the CRM FocusNow now runs on, and none of us wrote a line of its code – Claude did.
Why we built it
We wanted a CRM fully adapted to our company’s needs, which we could change whenever we needed to.
We wanted to prove that, with the help of AI, products like this can be built quickly and at low cost, and built properly, with security checks on every change.
We have experience and expertise in building IT systems, and we wanted to put it to use.
We also wanted to learn the latest AI capabilities better ourselves, and to apply them.
The process stayed, the developers changed
We kept a standard Agile delivery team’s discipline. Requirements live in Jira, which Claude reads and updates through an MCP connection. It clarifies them with us, writes the code, moves the ticket to testing, and deploys once we approve. Sprints run one week.
For most tickets Claude hands the build to a sub-agent and logs the tokens it used: tens of thousands for a typical change, hundreds of thousands for a large one. All of it runs on the standard Claude subscription each of us already pays for, with no API bill.
Security is a priority. Every change goes through a mandatory security scan, and regular scans of the whole codebase identify gaps, which we prioritise and fix in every sprint.
Claude as the front door
The CRM has its own MCP server, added to Claude as a custom connector. Many updates now happen by asking Claude rather than opening the application.
A morning summary combines calendar, email and assigned CRM tasks. A weekly SPM market report turns its findings into follow-up tasks, created in the CRM automatically.
Where ServiceNow fits
If a small team can build its own CRM, why would a client still buy ServiceNow? Our answer: you buy time, competence, or both – especially for work outside your primary business that you cannot afford to get wrong.
ServiceNow, meanwhile, is betting on governance, positioning AI Control Tower as the place to manage every AI agent and model in a company.
Key takeaways
- It works. A small company with specific needs, no large development team and no budget for expensive licences can build its own tool.
- AI can now write the code. Software of medium size and complexity can now be developed entirely by AI. People still decide what gets built.
- IT competence is still needed. Even without a development team, IT systems experience is what keeps the software secure, optimised and in line with architecture best practice, and keeps you in control of what is being built.
Join the next one
The FocusNow AI Club meets monthly, with working demonstrations rather than slideware. If you are weighing what to build and what to buy, get in touch.
Sources: Claude custom connectors using remote MCP · Claude pricing · ServiceNow launches AI Control Tower