3/1/2025

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
“How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether
you win or lose.”
BILL GATES

WHAT IS CRM?
• CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
• It's a technology used to manage interactions with customers and
potential customers.
• A CRM system helps organisations build customer relationships and
streamline processes so they can increase sales, improve customer
service, and increase profitability.

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What do people mean when they say CRM?

• CRM as Technology: This is a technology product, often in the cloud,
that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between
the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.
• CRM as a Strategy: This is a business’ philosophy about how
relationships with customers and potential customers should be
managed
• CRM as a Process: Think of this as the system a business adopts to
nurture and manage those relationships.

What does CRM software do?

• Record customer contact information such as email, telephone, website
social media profile, and more.
• Automatically pull in other information, such as recent news about the
company's activity, and it can store details such as a client's personal
preferences on communications.
• Organize this information to give you a complete record of individuals and
companies, so you can better understand your relationship over time.
• CRM software improves customer relationship management by creating a
360° view of the customer, capturing their interactions with the business,
and by surfacing the information needed to have better conversations with
customers.

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Why is CRM important?

• CRM enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service
users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.
• Forging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is
crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a
CRM’s function.
• Everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell
you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any
outstanding customer service issues, and more.
• CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in
enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you
need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the
framework for that strategy.

How do different business functions benefit

from using CRM?
• Sales teams can use CRM to understand their sales pipeline better.
• Sales managers can access reliable information about the progress of
individual team members in achieving their sales targets, for example,
and see how well individual sales teams, products and campaigns are
performing too.
• Sales reps benefit from reduced admin, a deeper understanding of
their clients, and the opportunity to spend more time selling and less
time inputting data.

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How do different business functions benefit

from using CRM?
• Marketing teams can use CRM to make forecasting simpler and more
accurate.
• They can get clear visibility over every opportunity or lead, and map
out the whole customer journey from enquiry through to sale, so
giving them a better understanding of the sales pipeline or
prospective work coming in.
• It’s also possible to include information from customers’ public social
media activity – their likes and dislikes, and their sentiment about
specific brands and businesses.

How do different business functions benefit

from using CRM?
• Customer service teams can effectively track conversations across
channels.
• A customer might raise an issue in one channel – say, Twitter or
Facebook – but then switch to email, phone or live chat to resolve it
in private.
• Without a common platform for customer interactions,
communications can be missed or lost in the flood of information –
leading to an unsatisfactory response to a valued customer.

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How do different business functions benefit

from using CRM?
• Supply-chain, procurement and partner management teams can
manage relationships better.
• They can track meetings with suppliers and partners, record requests
made, add useful notes, schedule follow-ups and stay on top of
expected next steps.
• Reporting enables businesses to compare the efficiency of suppliers
and so manage their entire supply chain more effectively.

How do different business functions benefit

from using CRM?
• The HR team can use CRM to accelerate the recruitment process and
track employee performance.
• CRM can help the HR function by speeding up the on-boarding
process, automating the process of managing candidates, analysing
resourcing needs and identifying skills gaps, and supporting the
pursuit of staff retention targets.

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What are the benefits of CRM?

1. Enhanced contact management
2. Cross-team collaboration
3. Heightened productivity
4. Empowered sales management
5. Accurate sales forecasting
6. Reliable reporting
7. Improved sales metrics
8. Increased customer satisfaction and retention
9. Boosted marketing ROI
10. Enriched products and services

Enhanced contact management

• Every call, question, negotiation, and touchpoint from prospects and
clients is recorded and accessible to the entire team with a
centralised contact management system.

This gives both sales, marketing, and customer service teams a boost
in terms of tracking, pipe progression and client history.

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Cross-team collaboration
• Build on the expertise of individuals — a CRM system enables people
from different parts of a business to work together.

A sales team can collaborate with a product team to produce bespoke

quotes, while a marketing campaign that generates a lead can equip a
salesperson to have a more informed, tailored conversation with the
prospect.

Increased productivity
• Cut out administrative tasks like follow-up emails and "catch up"
meetings with management.
• With a CRM, follow-up emails can be auto-generated and tested for
effectiveness, management can easily access the most recent details
of a customer meeting, and customer service administrators can learn
the background of a customer without leaving the call.

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Empowered sales management

• Empower sales managers with data to analyse customer
relationships, track sales-related activity, assess deal viability, mobilise
extra help when needed, and provide teams with real-time updates.

Manage sales pipeline and all the individual milestones along the way,
from lead generation through to closing.

Integrated sales forecasting

• A single source of truth makes it much easier for sales managers to
make accurate forecasts, thanks to their visibility of sales in the
pipeline.

Sales teams are able to learn from the past and forecast the future
through historical data, while predictive analytics makes use of
insights from big data to anticipate future customer behaviour.

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Reliable reporting
• Get an at-a-glance view of its sales pipeline so it's simple to spot
potential issues and nip them in the bud.

As well as making data digestible, reports improve team productivity

by saving on time that would once have been spent pulling data
manually or laboriously creating pivot tables in spreadsheets.

Improved sales metrics

• Nurture the right prospects in a timely and efficient way by zeroing in
on the leads that really matter. CRM data and reporting systems
provide insights into conversion effectiveness at various points in the
sales funnel.

Once a business better understands its customers, upselling and

cross-selling opportunities arise– opening up additional business
opportunities from existing customers.

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Increased customer satisfaction and

retention
• Having an easily accessible view of a customer’s interactions to date
makes it easier to anticipate issues and deal with complaints.

This creates a more positive experience for customers who no longer

have to endure the frustrations of being bounced around between
departments and channels, and having to re-explain their problem
each time.

Better marketing ROI

• Effective tracking helps businesses to understand what marketing
activities and campaigns are effective with their client base.

Campaign tracking provides actionable insights into what type of

marketing works for which type of customer, making it easier for
marketers to maximise their budgets and deliver greater ROI.

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Enhanced products and services

• A good CRM system will gather information from a huge variety of
sources across a business and beyond.
• This gives unprecedented insight into how customers feel and what
they are saying about an organization — so businesses can improve
what they offer, spot problems early, and identify gaps.

CRM in B2B
• B2B CRM stands for Business to Business Customer Relationship
Management and refers to systems, technologies, strategies, and
processes that help B2B companies manage their relationships with
existing and potential customers.
• B2B CRM can help B2B companies better understand their customers’
needs. Comprehension is essential in the B2B field, due to the
complex nature of the customer relationship.

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CRM’s focus on customer

interactions is a key
component

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Six strategic options and Six activities

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