Customer Relationship Management:
Putting Customers at the Center of the Business
Business Unified™
A White Paper by Exact Software
Customer Relationship
Management can only
be a success if the solution
is integrated throughout
the entire organization,
leading to better customer
communication and
retention.
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©2005, Exact Holding North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has sustained success through its ability to
help companies sell but, only focuses on a portion of the customer relationship, not
taking into account pervasive business processes that can affect customers. Yet nearly
all facets of the organization are driven and affected by the customer relationship.
Incorporating all organizational procedures across the enterprise will serve to advance
these relationships and make companies more profitable.
CRM systems can be very effective solutions for managing sales cycles. However, using
current CRM point solutions will not build and manage an entire customer experience,
merely the components of the sales and marketing cycles. There is promise, however.
While traditional CRM systems have lacked the ability to encompass the full realm
of business processes, new technologies are emerging that empower businesses to
realize the full potential of customer relationships.
This paper addresses how CRM technology has evolved, the current challenges in
merging existing enterprise-wide processes, and the necessary requirements for
making CRM an integral success throughout the entire organization, leading to better
customer communication and retention.
The Evolution of CRM
Over the past two decades, CRM solutions have evolved from contact databases that
assisted salespeople in tracking prospects, to complex real-time customer relationship
management environments that enabled better responsiveness to customer needs.
Early CRM systems followed standard protocols based on company size, product type,
and buyer. The early 1990s saw technology advances come to fruition with the
a