CRM's Benefits

Benefits
Customer relationship management tools have been shown to help companies attain these objectives:[3]

Streamlined sales and marketing processes
Higher sales productivity
Added cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Improved customer service, loyalty, and retention
Increased call center efficiency
Higher close rates
Better customer profiling and targeting
Reduced expenses
Increased market share
Higher overall profitability
Marginal costing
[edit] Challenges
Tools and workflows can be complex to implement, especially for large enterprises. While some companies report great success, initiatives have also been known to fail—mainly owing to poor planning, a mismatch between software tools and company needs, roadblocks to collaboration between departments, and a lack of workforce buy-in and adoption.[citation needed]

Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and recording interactions and communications with customers. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking and the management of accounts, territories, opportunities, and—at the managerial level—the sales pipeline itself. Next came the advent of tools for other customer-facing business functions, as described below.

Customer relationship management technology has been, and still is, offered as on-premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure. Perhaps the most notable trend has been the growth of tools delivered via the Web, also known as cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS). In contrast with conventional on-premises software, cloud-computing applications are sold by subscription, accessed via a secure Internet connection, and displayed on a Web browser. Companies don’t incur the initial capital expense of purchasing software; neither must they buy and maintain IT hardware to run it on. In 2009, SaaS represented approximately 20% of all customer relationship management spending, and continues its trajectory of outselling on-premises software by a ratio of 3-to-1.[1]

[edit] Types/variations
[edit] Sales Force Automation
As its name implies, a sales force automation (SFA) system provides an array of capabilities to streamline all phases of the sales process, minimizing the time that reps need to spend on manual data entry and administration. This allows them to successfully pursue more customers in a shorter amount of time than would otherwise be possible. At the heart of SFA is a contact management system for tracking and recording every stage in the sales process for each prospective customer, from initial contact to final disposition. Many SFA applications also include features for opportunity management, territory management, sales forecasting and pipeline, workflow automation, quote generation, and product knowledge. Newly-emerged priorities are modules for Web 2.0 e-commerce and pricing management.[1]