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CRM Applications Product Roundup
Article ID: 21055
Posted October 1st, 2007
Customer relationship management (CRM) is an application type that is sometimes regrettably vague. Some define it as anything that has to do with selling something to a customer, which covers a great deal of territory. Technically speaking, that could include airplanes, cars, telephones, and even postage stamps. More to the point, it could include anything related to travel, communications, sales, and retrieval of corporate information that might be related in any way to a sale of products or services.
To keep this product roundup to a manageable size, we'll define a CRM application as one that fulfills at least three conditions. First, it must help facilitate or automate communications and other customer-related processes by an enterprise's employees, but not necessarily restricted to the sales staff. So, for example, it should be able to track information such as customer contact information, contact history, and transaction history and make it available to any authorized enterprise employee. Second, it must enable analysis of customer data for such purposes as prediction of demand, marketing campaigns, and management decisions related to enterprise strategy. Third, it must be usable by enterprises in virtually any kind of business or market, and not simply restricted or tailored to business functions of a single type, for example, distribution or warehousing. We'll also limit ourselves to CRM solutions that run under i5/OS or OS/400, as opposed to web-based, client-based, or on-demand applications that can be accessed by System i users via browser or network but that don't run natively on the platform.
Applications that meet the first qualification are sometimes called contact management applications, but those are too limited in their functions to be included here. In addition, nearly any good document-management or messaging product will facilitate communications with customers and among sales staff members. Solutions that meet the second requirement could be virtually any business intelligence or accounting product, all of which are product categories that are too broad for the scope of this overview.
Finally, note that there are other product types, many examples of which embody within them CRM attributes by definition, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supplier-relationship management applications. However, because virtually no one would buy those types of products simply to take advantage of their CRM capabilities, those won't be included here either.
What we are left with are applications that are geared to managing multiple aspects of an enterprise's customer relationships and communications, regardless of the type of business in which the enterprise is engaged, and that don't limit themselves to a single aspect of customer communications or relations, for example, call-center operations or sales-force automation. Generally speaking, all applications included here offer automated access to an internal or external database of customer information, integration between the various CRM features the product includes, and some level of customizability for individual organizations making use of them.
The product descriptions provided are merely overviews of some major modules or features available with a particular solution. For more complete and detailed information on any offering, please consult the vendor or product URLs that follow each product summary.
John Ghrist is senior products editor for System iNEWS.
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Customer Relationship Management Applications
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C2 CRM CRM: Sales & Marketing
Customer Information System (CIS) Customer Relationship Management enTouch.crm Infor CRM
M3 Mobile Sales, Service and Marketing mySAP CRM Sugar Enterprise Wintouch eCRM |
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