The CRM Guide reviews leading CRM software applications to help you make an informed choice when choosing the right CRM for your business. Please note we are currently updating all our CRM reviews!
What is CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) assists companies in managing all kinds of interactions with customers.
This could be in the form of sales, customer service, marketing, advertising and loyalty programs.
It is said that the key goals of CRM are to anticipate and understand the needs of an organization’s customers, both current and prospective, optimize the customer management cycle and increase customer retention and loyalty.
People who use Customer Relationship Management or CRM Software are sales, marketing, customer support and anyone else who needs to have a comprehensive view of customer information.
In addition to improved customer loyalty and sales, companies who implement CRM systems are also more often than not looking for cost savings.
CRM Software aims to automate the customer management function by connecting internal departments thus improving communication and by the collection and analysis of customer data.
Some of the leading names in the world of Customer Relationship Management software are Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and salesforce.com.
But CRM is more than software, it is a strategy that puts customer focus at the forefront of everything a company does.
Before implementation, the CRM market should be researched. There are many online tools to help with this task, this site being one of them. Are you an enterprise size organization or a small to medium (SME) business? Be examining what’s on offer you will be better equipped to make the right choice.
Other important aspects to be considered are whether you will operate the application on your company’s computer system or if you will have the vendor host it for you. This is called software as a service or SaaS.
Pricing is sometimes based on a per user basis, so it is important to know the scale of your organization before requesting quotations.
Employees will need to be trained on the new system, which may be done by the vendor, a consulting firm or in-house. Technical manuals should be made available online or in a central depository for shared access.