There is a lot of information on the web about what a CRM is. Here are a few definitions:

"Uses reliable processes to better serve customers"

"A tool, usually internet based, used for interacting with customers and storing customer and sales information"

"Helps a company manage customer relationships in an organized way."

What is a CRM?

A CRM is a tool to allow a business to manage customer relationships in a structured and organized way. It gives insight into your sales and marketing and customer support processes and in addition, companies that implement a CRM often see substantial improvements in business processes and increases in Sales team efficiency.

Most normal CRM systems are divided into three modules:

Marketing
The Marketing module allows your marketing team to plan both long and short term Marketing related activities within your business.

Marketing Planning
Marketing Plans can be entered into the CRM and budgets, targets and campaign related tasks can be set against the campaigns themselves. Campaigns can be specific to company size, location, preferred products etc., as all of this information is stored within the CRM.

Campaign Management
Marketing 'campaigns' might take the form of trade shows, TV ads, magazine commercials, and may target different potential customers, but leads gathered from these campaigns are entered into the CRM, thus giving you an accurate measurement of the success of each marketing campaign.

Your CRM can be combined with an e-marketing application to target the right customers with the right products and to analyse their behaviour during an email marketing campaign. Over time, you can build up an understanding of what attracts customers to your products/services and how they behave whilst viewing the information in your marketing email and in your website. This provides you with a very powerful means of reaching your target audience and giving them best information in the best format.

Lead Management
A key purpose of a CRM Marketing module is to generate leads for Sales to qualify into real sales and thus revenue for the company. CRM lead management entails managing leads in a structured and organized way, evaluating whether they are worthy of follow up and grading them accordingly in order to convert them in to Sales opportunities for the Sales teams to follow up and close as sales deals.

Sales
The CRM Sales module helps your Sales Managers structure their Sales team processes from presales through to quotations and deal closure. The CRM allows your Sales teams to capture key customer interactions (calls, meetings, emails etc). Sales Managers can then process this data and compare sales quotas against actual sales. In addition, the CRM can automatically alert Sales people with recommended courses of action and provide structured communication templates, decreasing administration and sales ramp time. This is known as ‘automated workflow’ and can be customized to match your company's sales policy.

Opportunity Management
Opportunities are potential sales, potential revenue for the company. The CRM helps the Sales team by organizing all the relevant opportunity information into one central database and it helps business managers by giving a real-time ‘window’ into sales status.

Typically information stored on an opportunity is as follows:

		Prospective customer – company details etc,
		Type of sales opportunity and product interest
		Expected sales revenue,
		Expected sales closing date,
		Key people in the sales opportunity and their roles within the deal/company,
		Key sales-related dates and milestones

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