Customer Relationship Management (CRM) involves managing a company's interactions with current and potential customers across various channels. It encompasses sales, marketing, customer service, and other applications used to attract and retain customers. CRM has evolved from a focus on products to prioritizing customers through personalized experiences. Vendors offer various CRM systems that integrate customer data and automate processes to improve customer service and increase sales. While CRM has grown rapidly, some companies still struggle with implementation challenges and high costs. The future of CRM is focused on more individualized, real-time interactions across expanding electronic channels.

1. Customer Relationship Management – Overview

2. Customer Relationship Management - Key Terms
Contact management
A part of the CRM process that is at the heart of all effective
sales and marketing efforts. Contact Management involves
contacts to customers, forecasting deals, calendering and
scheduling, and expense reporting. Marketing concentrates
on personalizing customer preferences and offering them
satisfying experiences.

3. Encompasses sales, marketing, customer service, and
support applications. It includes all the tools, technologies
and business procedures used to attract and retain customers,
prospects and business partners. CRM is a combination of
Contact Management, Sales Force Automation (SFA),
Opportunity Management, Relationship Management,
Marketing Automation, Company Web sites, Telesales and
Telemarketing Systems, and evolving eBusiness
technologies.

4. The transformation of key business processes through the
use of Internet technologies. It is the buying and selling of
goods over the Internet (e-commerce) and the use of Internet
technology to impact all areas of businesses.

5. A collection of applications used to manage the whole
business. It links back-office computer systems including
manufacturing, financial, human resources, sales-force
automation, supply-chain management, data warehousing,
document management, and after-sales service and support.
ERP allows all company divisions to share a common
database and business analysis tools.

6. Used by marketing departments to store all product and
customer information and information about competitors
and collateral to assist in the sales cycle.
Provide users with the tools to track opportunities and
forecast potentially profitable deals. It is used to advise
sales force on the best sales method(s) to use through the
entire sales cycle. OMS is integrated to the CRM processes.

7. Used to organize complex products and services to reach effective
performance level. Sales-force automation software (SFA)
CRM's predecessor.
SFA provided information technology to the sales people to
facilitate the sales process. It included marketing database
applications for promotional activities, lead generation and tracking
applications, contact management to manage actions required to
initiate and maintain customer contact, and remote order entry with
varying degrees of integration to the host system used to collect
sales orders from the field.

8. Companies calling consumers to sell their goods or services,
or consumers calling companies to make purchases in
response to mailings or other forms of advertising.
Used in relation to CRM.

9. Customer Relationship Management - Key Players
E.piphany, Inc.
E.piphany strives to lead the customer management software industry
by providing intelligent customer interaction software for the customer
economy. Incorporated in this is a single enterprise-wide view of the
customer across all touch points to cement customer loyalties and
drive profitability.
Kana Communications, Inc.
Kana believes that the winners in the digital economy will be the
businesses who create a compelling experience while building long-lasting
relationships with their customers, partners, and suppliers.

10. Onyx Software Corporation
The mission of Onyx is to help businesses achieve a competitive
advantage by enabling anytime, anywhere interactions between their
employees, customers, and partners.
Siebel Systems, Inc.
Siebel was founded in 1993 to address the growing need to better
serve the customer. They are highlighted by many experts as one of the
hottest CRM companies around. Siebel helps companies gain an
advantage through e-business strategies enabling them to manage all
customer touch points, including person-to-person contact, the
telephone, email, and the Internet.

11. Synchrony Communications
Synchrony is a systems integration and development company that
partners with e-manufacturers, institutions, municipalities, and
government agencies to provide fully-integrated, turnkey solutions.
Customer Relationship Management - Products and Services
For a business to succeed, it must provide customers with excellent
products and services through effective Customer Relationship
Management. Solid CRM systems provide fast responses to customer
inquiries, boost sales, and show customers that the business is actively
satisfying their needs. Some of the best CRM systems have
comprehensive account management functions, automated quotes and
correspondence, and instant access to specific account history.

12. is widely considered to be the leading
company in the CRM industry.
Siebel software allows companies to understand customer
behavior and buying patterns. Users of the software can view
order status, part numbers, shipping types, and retrieve
revenue information about current customers in seconds.
Using a rapid, structured methodology, Siebel helps
organizations create, integrate, and optimize their sales,
service, and marketing.

13. Onyx Software Corporation offers a company - wide
customer centric e-business solution for succeeding in the
Internet Economy. Through three audience-specific, Web-based
product lines, Onyx consolidates critical relationship
information and makes it available to employees, customers,
and partners. This process helps companies share information,
analyze the health of their business, build customer loyalty and
gain a competitive edge. The software enables companies to
improve customer relationships and increase revenues through
higher productivity.

14. Kana Communications
Enables companies to manage high volumes of e-mail and
Web based communications while delivering specific,
personalized information to each customer. Kana ties
together marketing, sales, and service to maintain long-lasting
customer relationships. Companies can monitor
interactions with their customers through a variety of
effective methods using Kana's software.

15. Synchrony Systems
Develops hardware and software solutions that help
companies increase productivity and profitability.
Synchrony integrates customer interaction across various
channels of communication-phone, fax, e-mail andWeb
chat. Synchrony's goals for each of its customers are the
reduction of implementation costs and time and elimination
of the risks involved with traditional CRM investments.

16. E.piphany
is the onlyWeb-based, intelligent CRM solution to
coordinate and unify, in real time, all inbound and outbound
interactions with customers, regardless of whether they fall
into the business-to-consumer or business-to-business
category. E.piphany prides itself on being flexible,
customizable, and responsive.

17. Customer Relationship Management - Market Trends
The Evolution of CRM
In the late eighties, CRM began to emerge as the successor
to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). ERP had a
traditional, product-centric approach to marketing a
company's products and services. CRM developed because
ERP lacked the personalization sought by today's companies
and to provide basic communication, contact, and analysis
tools. In CRM's early days, these tools and the three areas of
CRM - service, marketing, and sales - were poorly
integrated and marketing databases could not fully utilize
their potential.

18. CRM lacked good automation and advanced technological applications.
As the nineties progressed, CRM systems changed rapidly, and two factors
significantly affected CRM’s success. First, global competition increased
tremendously, causing products and services to be more difficult to
differentiate. The product-centric view of traditional marketing changed to a
more customer-centric view, offering customers more personalization. The
second factor was advanced technology, which gathered customer
information from all over the enterprise into a single system. New
technologies enabled greater processing power and data analysis capabilities.
In addition, data architectures became more integrated and consistent.

19. Currently, as CRM becomes a more integral component of the modern
business enterprise strategy, many companies are turning to wireless devices
to deliver market-differentiating customer service. CRM is used with data
warehousing, data mining, and other intelligence-based applications. The
market continues to develop as many ERP vendors try to respond to the
competition by integrating front-office applications with back-office systems.
CRM still has many downsides. Product maturity and cost-effectiveness have
not always reached the desired results. There is frustration among end users
about the performance and capability of the CRM solutions. Clients are not
convinced that CRM performance measures up to the market and vendor hype
and label CRM systems as overpriced. CRM is a fast growing market and
prices are positioned to decline.

20. There is great competition between vendors to differentiate their
products and services along functionality, integration with existing
systems, ease of use, and the range of target markets. Currently, CRM
offers faster response to customer inquiries, increased efficiency
through highly developed automation, and a deeper understanding of
customers through advanced analysis systems. CRM tools are
developed continuously and more sophisticated applications enter the
market rapidly.

21. Future of CRM

22. During the last few years, globalization in the field of e-commerce has
challenged companies to make customer communication truly
interactive. The new customer relationship management strategy is
moving away from one-to-many mass-communication philosophy to a
more individualized one-to-one communication. Real-time, automated
marketing communication regarding personalized sales and services
will make companies’ communication with the consumer more
relevant and timely. New electronic channels are developing
continuously, making CRM’s existence in companies’ strategy even
more vital. It is estimated that the CRM market will grow from $3.7
billion (US$) in 1999 to $16.8 billion by the year 2003. According to a
recent study from AMR Research, the CRM segment is expected to
grow at a compound annual growth rate of 49% through 2004, which
is more than double the overall expected increase in the IT services
market. Stronger front-to-back office integration and wider
concentration on CRM business processes are the key reasons for
CRM’s notable growth.