Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is an information technology industry term for methodologies, strategies, software, and other web-based capabilities that help an enterprise organize and manage customer relationships. The idea is to have the same information available to all in the company so that every product or service need of the customer is met.
Customers demand immediate response with a personalized touch.
Meeting their needs puts new demands on the enterprise. Since traditional ERP applications did not include a customer management aspect, CRM was the logical next step. Vantive, for example, started as early as 1992 in the development and implementation of these customer management applications. Two trends have brought CRM to the forefront, explains Boston University professor Thomas H. Davenport, who directs Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change. Second, technology has ripened to the point where it's possible to put customer information from all over the enterprise into a single system.