ERP

Customer relationship management (CRM)

February 2nd, 2007

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information.There are three aspects of CRM which can each be implemented in isolation from one another:

1. Operational CRM: automation or support of customer processes that include a company???s sales or service representative
2. Collaborative CRM: direct communication with customers that does not include a company???s sales or service representative (???self service??�)
3. Analytical CRM: analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

The technology requirements of a CRM strategy are very complex and far reaching. The basic building blocks include

• A database to store customer information. This can be a CRM specific database or an enterprise data warehouse. There are many vendors in this space including IBM, ORACLE, Teradata etc.
• Operational CRM requires customer agent support software such as Siebel Systems etc.
• Collaborative CRM requires customer interaction systems, eg an interactive website, automated phone systems etc.
• Analytical CRM requires statistical analysis software such as Excel, SAS etc., as well as software that manages any specific marketing campaigns such as Teradata Relationship Optimizer, Unica, etc.

Each of these can be implemented in a very basic manner or in a high end complex installation.

read more - wikipedia

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