Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management is the discipline companies use to manage their relationship with customers. It involves the practices, processes, tools and technologies used to accomplish that goal.
Over the past 20 years, however, CRM systems evolved into automation and reporting engines coupled to a database of customer records and became primarily a tool for Sales and Marketing automation and management. Processes and tools lost touch with and reduced "Customer Relationship" to storage of transactional information and became all about process "Management."
A sales person using a CRM system today has a solitary experience of feeding a database through static forms so that management can get reports and analyze the business.
Social CRM (both the processes and the tools) is a response to changes in the business environment and the shift in control from companies to customers.
Well-implemented Social CRM software should help sales people to engage with customers and, as a result, sell better. Instead of forcing users to feed a database, Social CRM leverages the Internet and Social Networks to bring information from the outside to help support the sales and marketing processes. Addresses are in Google maps, contact and professional information are in LinkedIn, company news are in Blogs and Twitter.
The experience of using a Social Sales tool is of interacting with people through Social Media, both inside and outside the organization.
We do not think "Social" is a layer that can be bolted on top of a traditional CRM System. We believe a true CRM system for the future has to be social at the core.
Our system supports classical metaphors (such as "Leads", "Opportunities", "Contact", "Project") and provides analytical tools to help to manage and develop new business. But recognizes that the marketing and sales are neither linear processes nor independent of human relationships. it is the true definition of CRM, not what the current establishment think when they hear "CRM".
