CRM For beginners

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process or methodology used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. CRM helps businesses gain insight into the behavior of customers. This in turn can help businesses to Provide better customer service, Increase customer revenues, Discover new customers,
Cross sell/Up Sell products more effectively, Help sales staff close deals faster,Make call centers more efficient and Simplify marketing and sales processes. CRM is more than just technology, its a strategy. It is about the interactions of the entire business with your customers.

Typically a CRM solution would cover broad areas of Marketing, Sales and Service.

Things are looking bright for CRM professionals over the next year, according to a number of recent reports, job boards and industry developments. Year 2007 has seen couple of postponement of CRM projects just for the simple reason of unavailability of skilled consultants. That shortage of skills seems to be translating into increased pay for those that have them. Last year, the financial services industry had the most demand for CRM jobs, followed by manufacturing and healthcare & then services.

Major players in the CRM domain are SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. With Siebel, Oracle CRM and Peoplesoft CRM customers to serve, it seems that Oracle would be busy in serving the huge client base as well as getting them togther.

Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel will hit SAP hard and make it more difficult for Microsoft to make inroads into the enterprise market. So its all going to be interesting !