What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an essential business tool for companies to track and organise their current and prospective customers and partners. By integrating a wide range of up to date software applications to support customer interactions, CRM can provide a valuable process of improving service interactions.

Alyssa Dver “CRM is the notion that businesses should focus on the customer and reinvent themselves to deliver personalized, service-driven sales and support.” - Information management Magazine

One of the main goals of CRM is to build up a rapport with clients and partners and establish long lasting connections to ensure that the services provided are up to date and that all details and contact information is relevant for the targeted market. More than just a merely a sales tool CRM is considered by many as a valuable process in providing informative information to customers and partners to improve service interactions.

Over the last couple of years customers of CRM are demanding more information and interaction with their management facility than ever before. This has subsequently meant that many companies are redesigning their CRM databases to allow greater interaction and functionality for clients and their partners. In the world of e-commerce and international trade, for companies to compete with the maximum level of efficiency they need to be able to adapt and cater the demand of their customer and provide a greater beneficial service than ever before.

The early days of CRM were mainly used to function for large organisations to maintain their online information for customer service reps and staff: merely used a a management tool to track the process of sales activities and to assess progress.

Now CRM systems have adapted to integrate from being merely storage facilities to now decision making tools for management that provide greater benefits to customers and staff alike by greatly improving the service interaction and thus adding value to the company and their service.

Overall CRM is becoming more ingrained into the overall business strategy of many companies as the developing technology allows ever greater degrees of on time interaction and updates of services and notifications. CRM is “ a journey, not a destination” (businessweek)

The Benefits of Effective CRM

- Reduced operational costs

- Increase customer satisfaction and the service encounter

- Expand the target market and attract new partners

- Increase the number of opportunities and develop additional streams of revenue

- Acquire a greater degree of information about the market and competitors

- Long term gains of profitability and sustainable income

- Provides additional room for an organisation to move forward and innovate new ideas and concepts

- An effective CRM facility will highlight all the areas of inefficiency and what operational procedures need to be updated and modified

- Provides a strategic element to service interactions