Customer Relationship Management

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is basically a process or methodology that is used for learning and understanding customers' needs and behavior in order to develop stronger relationships with them. There are many technological components to CRM, but CRM should not be considered merely in technological terms. The better and more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. CRM helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into the behavior of customers and the value of those customers.

Using CRM, a firm or business will be able to provide better customer service, increase customer revenues, discover new customers , cross sell/up sell products more effectively, help sales staff close deals faster, make call centers more efficient and simplify marketing and sales processes. CRM aligns marketing processes and drive customer demand using functionality to enhance management of marketing resources, segments and lists, campaigns, leads, trade promotions, and marketing analytics. CRM enables the firm or business to acquire, grow, and retain profitable relationships with functionality for sales planning and forecasting and the management of territories, accounts, contacts, activities, opportunities, quotations, orders, product configuration, pricing, billing, and contracts. CRM can drive service revenue and profitability with support for service sales and marketing. More effectively manage service orders, contracts, complaints and returns, in-house and depot repairs, warranties, resource planning, e-service, and service analytics. Functionality to support call centers, field service, and e-service provides flexible delivery options. CRM will boost a firm's brand presence and profits with visibility into and control of all trade related processes, increase the accounting accuracy of trade and financial results with back-office integration, help the firm gain key business insights to optimize trade activities as well as to increase the firm' s trade promotion success with analytics and enhanced management of trade funds, promotions, claims, and retail execution.