What is CRM?

We look at the importance of customer relationship management tools for business


CRM is a crucial part of modern business - you’ve probably heard of companies like Salesforce, SAP and Oracle, all of whom offer CRM solutions. But what exactly is CRM? What can it do - and should your business be using it?

What is CRM?
The initialism CRM stands for customer relationship management, which is an integral part of business that covers the ways in which firms foster communication with existing and potential customers.

Typically, companies rely on data and analytics to explore ways they can improve and extend their relationships with customers. As well as maintaining a positive reputation among customers and wider stakeholders, CRM also allows businesses to drive sales.

Customer relationship management covers all aspects of a company's interaction with customers, such as contact databases, conversation exchanges, access to relevant communication channels, and ample storage to ensure they can maintain customer resources.

What does CRM software do?
Paper-based systems are timely and bulky, but CRM software has emerged as a cost-effective solution. Using CRM software solutions, companies are able to improve customer interaction and cater to their needs more effectively.


With a CRM system, companies can find out more information about customers. For instance, they can explore purchases customers have made in the past, searches they've conducted and adverts they may have clicked on. This bulk of information allows firms to create customer profiles, meaning they can better target stakeholders.

Customers can feel neglected if firms bombard them with irrelevant messages and products. Drawing on data taken taken from customer interactions, CRM platforms ensure that each customer's experience is tailored to them when they access company websites, contact customer services or want to keep up to date with firms via social media sites.

That said, CRM isn't just a system that lets firms improve sales channels. At the same time, it provides them with a central hub where they can manage processes across the business. Many CRM services can handle human resources, marketing, finance and supply chain management. SAP, for example, offers software that brings together business departments.

The central notion is that with CRM services, all professionals within a company have a place where they can access customer data. As a result, they can put customers at the heart of their work and provide a better customer experience overall. These services can facilitate up-selling and cross-selling as well.

Without CRM software, employees typically end up spending more time trying to generate business leads, close deals and maintain relationships with clients. By investing in this technology, companies can speed up these processes and focus their attention on less mundane tasks.They can identify and target new customers, too. Much of this software works with third-party services such as MailChimp and Google Apps, further boosting productivity.

Benefits and disadvantages of using CRM software
There are numerous ways a CRM can help improve your business. Customer retention is a principal driver for many organisations – improving relationships with your customers will make them feel more valued, which will increase their loyalty.

Similarly, keeping your customers happy can increase revenues and attract new customers. Not only are happy customers more likely to recommend your business, a CRM system will also make it easier to target potential new customers by analysing trend data from your existing sales.


Of course, there are some potential drawbacks to be aware of, too. As with any new IT tool, staff will need to be trained in its use and depending on the profile of your sales force, you may face resistance to using the new CRM tool as people wish to carry on using the same habits, workflows and processes that they always have.

This can be a problem, because another pitfall of CRM systems is that they only work if they are kept up-to-date with customer information. If sales staff are lax with logging their interactions with customers, a CRM system will be drastically less effective.

This can be helped with an effective programme of education and training that lets users move at their own pace, along with peer mentoring and change management.

Source: IT Pro