Here is a rather long (17-page) article that was published on Newsfactor.com, A Portrait of Today’s CRM Landscape.
This article provides a fairly comprehensive look at the “state-of-the art” from 8 leading CRM technology solution companies (listed below) that should broaden your perspective on what CRM technologies can do for your organization:
Customer relationship management (CRM) in name has been around for about 10-12 years. Yet the concept — knowing your customers and delivering the level of service to them that is appropriate for their existing and future importance — has long been at the heart of commerce.
CRM has become more valuable and efficient thanks to improving technologies and practices. Advanced software has given larger enterprises that personalized small business feel of customers, which boosted service and sales. These tools, which have become more affordable thanks to software as a service (SaaS) solutions, have enabled small/midsized businesses (SMBs) to gain big-firm insight into their buyers’ behavior to help them stay competitive.
CRM has also become more challenging…
The numbers of channels has been expanding, such as SMS and mobile web a.k.a. unified communications (UC). Customers are gaining more control of their interactions through online research. Many products and services have become commoditized, most notably travel.
And when the economy turns soft, as it appears to be doing in the US especially, lower prices and greater convenience necessitated by rising gas costs that are limiting travel often trump service and relationships in buying decisions.
To get the 360-degree picture of CRM the writer(s) asked leading executives from the following companies for their insights on key CRM-related issues:
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It is true that CRM has become very valuable to small and big businesses. This has given customers, the feel of being important and with great support from the companies. Thanks to technology, growing your business is not as hard as before. However, some smalltime entrepreneurs are wondering if they are ready for the big time. If they need to expand their horizons and get bigger softwares for their system. May it be CRM, WMS, or the whole ERP System. But I guess, there are already software solutions that cater to small to mid-market distribution organizations.