Nice post. I think you’ve described the basic premise of contact and lead management of CRM really well, particularly with respect to hosted or SaaS applications such as Sugar and Salesforce.
CRM can do a lot more than contact, marketing and lead management, plus it about more than a software application – it’s a strategy in itslef. When approached in this way organisations can achieve significant benefits in terms of improved efficiency through better business processes, workflow and communications. So things like reporting, business intelligence, better decision making and achieving an in-depth understanding of your customers and market all start to come into play.
I’ve used several CRM applications, personally I like Sage CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but whichever application you choose really depends on your business requirements and what you’re trying to achieve. We’ve produced a variety of whitepapers – ‘How to Get Started with CRM’ and ‘Getting CRM Right – a Project Methodology’ which are useful (and non-product specific) to anyone embarking on a CRM project, please feel free to contact Concentrix if you’d like a copy.
Peter