CRM means ''Customer Relationship Management'', i.e.

the concept of a planned and structured means of managing the relations with your customers. A CRM tool allows a business to manage customer relationships in a structured and organized way using software that is normally hosted in-house or on demand, in the cloud, for example, Zoho CRM. Application of a well thought out CRM implementation strategy combined with implementation of the right CRM tool for your business, helps give insight into your sales and marketing and customer support processes and improve team efficiency. In addition, companies that implement a CRM often see substantial improvements in business processes, Sales team collaboration as well as business profit. Most normal CRM systems are divided into three (but not restricted to) main modules: Marketing Sales Customer Service 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 In most businesses a sales opportunity will have several stages. For example prospecting, qualification, quotation, negotiation and closed (won) or closed (lost). The opportunity stages can be customized to match your companys sales process. A CRM system helps improve the efficiency of your Sales team as well as relations with your customers during each phase by providing functions to assist the Sales representative in performing suggested sales-related activities and / or using suggested sales-related communication templates, all of which can be predefined by your company's sales policy/process or business model. Many of these can be automated by the CRM Administrator via liaison with the Business Development/Sales Managers, thus structuring the process further, helping to reduce ramp time and saving on Sales Admin time. Here are a few examples of how you might use a CRM in your organisation: Your Sales person has just had an initial meeting with a new prospect he/she can use the CRM to send a polite thank you email, stored in the CRM, which pulls all relevant information and can be sent in one or two clicks as opposed to thirty minutes of typing. Sales admin time is greatly reduced and your customer receives a courteous and personalised follow up. An large sales deal has been quoted by one of your Sales team. The CRM can be customized to send automated alerts to the Sales Manager to get involved as well as (for example) an automatic notification with all relevant details to stock control personnel to prepare for production. Or, for example, if an Opportunity is lost, the CRM system can automatically notify the Sales person to enter details of why the deal was lost so your company builds up a Lessons Learned database. These approaches are known as "Guided Sales Methodology" and this is where companies benefit from working with a CRM Administrator / Consultant to assist in making suggestion to improve their business workflow by using the CRM tool. Quotation and Sales Order Management Once opportunities reach a Quotation stage, they can be converted to a quotation and, if they are set to the Closed Won stage, a Sales order. Most CRMs have standard functionality which allow your Sales team to quickly and easily create Quotation or Sales Order from an opportunity and this is then stored against the sales deal for easy reference. Most CRMs, especially those such as Salesforce.com can be integrated to ERP systems if required. Activity Management Activities are such things as Sales calls, meetings, discussions, internal notes, emails). Activity Management allows you to log all of your sales activities in one centralised platform, helping you to build a 360 degree view of customer communications. Most CRMs will allow you to synchronise these activities with MS Outlook/Lotus Notes. Customer Service A CRM allows you to effectively manage your companys customer support capability. This too can be customized to suit your business process and help you to provide what is stated in your Warranty based services, thus avoiding SLA (Service Level Agreement) non conformance issues. In addition, they can drastically reduce your support team admin time by building a company knowledgebase which can be used by the support team and even accessed by your customers in a self service portal. CRMs usually include the following customer support functionality: SLA/Warranty Management Resource Planning and Scheduling Solution Management - answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Call Center Management Collaborative customer support resource management A CRM solution can substantially improve your business processes, provide visibility into critical business intelligence and make your teams more efficient.