WHAT IS CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term used to describe the processes a company uses to track and organise its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM helps businesses to understand their customers’ needs and behaviours and therefore modify their business operations to improve the service provided to customers.

The basic concepts of a CRM are to:

* Capture relevant business data to provide marketing and business intelligence about your customers;
* Easily share information including notes and history with your team so they can provide customers with a seamless experience no matter which team member they communicate with;
* Ensure actions that need to be done for your customers are completed on time, by enabling you to monitor and manage the team’s activities.

We have all heard of the wonders of CRM – less customer churn, channel integration, lower sales cost, data consolidation, revenue growth and ultimately higher profitability.

When CRM is designed and implemented correctly it can do all this and more, providing a business with a competitive advantage which centres around a better understanding of customers, resulting in increased revenue and decreased costs.

Reality – CRM is not Easy to Implement Properly!

One of the biggest causes of unsuccessful CRM implementations is the mentality that CRM initiatives are technology driven. “Yeah, we need CRM. Find a CRM vendor, don’t pay too much, and all our problems will be solved!” This is a recipe for disaster!

CRM initiatives need to be driven by business goals, incorporating business strategy into product selection and rollout plans. It sounds almost elementary but is so often the cause of a CRM downfall – you must know what you are trying to achieve before designing and implementing any CRM application. What people fail to realize is that technology is only an enabler. Technology should support rather than drive the strategies, tactics and processes of any organization.