With an ever increasing need to actively keep in contact with customers, companies are looking at streamlining internal, more traditional communications. This means that the right technology to manage all interactions with customers has become a mission critical process. It is at the heart of customer satisfaction as well as company growth.

Customer relationship management solutions are software applications that can be managed by an in house or web based CRM software application. They help build and maintain the bridge to the customer from every part of your organisation.

If you integrate other applications such as your accounting or service management software systems into CRM software, then you will need to look closely at an in house deployment. Larger companies will take advantage of this. However this does involve considerable up front expenditure. Your budget must be carefully developed to consider the cost of the software which is typically priced on a per user basis.

In addition most likely you will need to engage specialist consultants that have experience in integrating applications into a CRM platform.

On the other hand, smaller to medium enterprises can take advantage of a web based CRM system. Today the most often coined phrase is "in the cloud". Essentially this allows any size of company to use enterprise level software such as CRM. The restrictions are that there is little if any integration. However, it still gives you many of the primary functions and features that will enable you to share customer information across different parts of your company. This also is costed on a per seat basis, but is typically charged monthly.

The primary objective is to be able to keep all customer information in a single place and allow you to maintain control of how you are dealing with each client. Each of your functional departments will have different requirements and also be able to obtain different reports from the system.

Sales management for example can develop forecasting reports for an individual customer or on all your clients. They can see the status of individual customer sales campaigns, the past steps taken as well as the tasks that will be undertaken in the near future. They can then actively become a part of that sales process, providing advice and guidance on the next steps.

Customer service management can review the status of client issues in real time, rather than wait until reports are delivered or have meetings to determine the status. Trends can also be understood over product related issues. With a repository of information, customer service can also be in a position to quickly advise customers of a resolution to a problem based on a history of similar issues with other customers.

In general it can be said that CRM is a management tool that will provide greater organisational efficiency, greater understanding of your sales position and assist in increasing customer satisfaction. The fact that it is being embraced by companies of varying sizes across a broad range of industries is testimony to the value that it is providing.