What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a piece of software that allows people from within (and outside) an organisation to get a view of customers’ profiles, buying patterns and other useful customer-centric information. Its’ primary purpose is to facilitate a better understanding of the organisations’ customers for the products or services that they purchase, the main contacts within the customer base, trends and preferences.

In simple terms, CRM software computerises the process of gaining a customer, selling to them, and tracking the ongoing relationship with them.

CRM plays an important role within business efficiencies and customer retention. There are many types of CRM with vendors like Mamut and Sage servicing the SME sector, vendors like Altitude Software which provides contact centre software for customer interaction, Motorola who provide industrial CRM solutions and then the big gun vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and the well known Salesforce.com. Equally, there are some superb add-ons to CRM such as Sales Quoting & Estimating software from vendors such as QuoteWerks which integrates seamlessly with most CRM packages.