What is CRM?

Before we start to discuss how important Customer Relation Management System (CRM) in today’s businesses Let us understand what is CRM. I started searching definition of CRM at http://www.bimsym.com/ and concluded, CRM that manages relationship with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information. Sales process goes through several sales force pipeline or business flow from lead to customer. CRM is an infrastructure that increase customer value and motivate valuable customers to remain loyal and motivate them to buy again. Perfect CRM make all tools available to the user by integrating CRM application with customer communication, team management and offered solution management, which facilitate the seamless coordination between the back office systems, the front office systems, and the web.

Customer Relation: Value and Importance:

No one would question the fact that businesses are spending more money on customer relation. Important and awareness of customer relation is now increased and more and more businesses understand the value and importance of customer retention. This truth is not only for large enterprise businesses but also true for small and mid size businesses. Theory of keeping Customer Relationship on top of marketing expenses advocate that business should pursue long-term relationships with customers instead of adopting a short-term one time transaction related relationship. Long term relationships with customers are lower the marketing expense, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and enhance revenues. It is known that customer is king and they have power. Strength of customer relationships, allows businesses to recover from occasional sub-optimal responses to customer needs. For customers, long-term relationships with businesses will provide economic and peace of mind. Overall, there is broad acceptance of the benefits of CRM. Importance of effective marketing campaign to reduce cost of sales and invest saving in customer relation by delivering services or products that customers really want is espoused by most businesses. Acceptance and enthusiasm for CRM has been increased. CRM white paper published by LeadOrganizer.net noted “Study proved that 70% of deals are failed because of poor customer relationship with businesses”.

By saying that I am emphasizing on two needs for all businesses:

1. Effective marketing campaign
   
2. Cost effective CRM
   
   Further I will discuss on these two topics.