What is CRM?
CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management. Initially CRM was conceived of as a term in the early 90’s to distinguish a new breed of software solutions from the then popular Contact Management and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems. CRM attempted to provide a 360° view of customers, by delivering tools and data access to all customer facing employees.
Typically this included sales, service and marketing departments. As employees engaged with customers other employees could see and understand the relationship, or that was the theory.
In these early days there were many failed CRM projects mainly due to poor implementation processes by vendors. User expectations were high based on software vendor sales pitch and invariably the purchasing organisations had no idea of their work load required to implement.
Today there is a drive to penetrate even deeper into the organisation and integrate CRM with other applications such as ERP systems, SharePoint, HR systems, Business Intelligence/Data Warehouses, etc. Users have an insatiable appetite for simplifying their processes and the drive in now on for data accessibility at ones finger tips. Successful CRM implementations will need to be well managed to avoid the pitfalls, but once implemented successfully, the rewards should be very gratifying. Take note; CRM should reflect what you need, not necessarily what others have deemed appropriate.
Now that you know what CRM is you should know that CRM has been superseded, today vendors like Microsoft are talking xRM – the concept of using the CRM environment to provide many application solutions. At first glance this might seem bizarre, but when you consider that there are a huge plethora of add-on adaptable applications for Microsoft Dynamics CRM; such as HR, Telephony, contractor management, project management, training management, legal, employee management, etc – you start to realise it is conceivable to operate your entire business inside such an environment.
