ICMI's Customer Management Insight - December 2007 - (Page 32) TECHNOLOGY BY JOE FLEISCHER for directors, managers, analysts and technology managers M Redefining CRM We examine how the latest CRM software suites exemplify new ways in which organizations are connecting with customers. Customer relationship management, or CRM, usually refers to a broad category of software and to a business goal of understanding customers better the more you interact with them. Yet, as a category of software, CRM can be difficult to pin down if you don’t distinguish between a description of what CRM software does and the business goals that CRM software aims to achieve. In this article, we cite observations from a variety of software companies about how they, in collaboration with their clients, continually refine their definitions of and goals for CRM. In a sidebar within this article, we also summarize what’s new with CRM suites these companies offer. How do you define customer relationship management? JAMES NORWOOD Vice President of Product Marketing, Epicor Epicor defines CRM as a business initiative as opposed to a software system. We believe fundamentally that customer relationship processes should be embedded in the very fabric of the application so that information is available to the people within the business who work with these processes day-to-day. PATRIC TIMMERMANS Director of Global and Industry Product Marketing for CRM, Infor Customer experience management is the new CRM. We still name our products in a conventional way — Infor Sales, Infor Service, Infor Inbound Marketing, and Infor Outbound Marketing. Leading organizations, however, do not differentiate between marketing, icmi’s insight www.icmi.com | DECEMBER 2007 32 http://www.icmi.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.