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customer relationship management or crm software is one of the most popular enterprise technologies in the space today but what exactly is crm software i'm gonna explain that here today [Music] my name is eric kimbrelling i'm the ceo of third stage consulting we're an independent consulting firm that helps clients through their digital transformation journeys and clients often ask us what is crm software what exactly is it what does it do and i want to give you a brief description of what that is here today first and foremost crm software is a way to manage your sales pipeline so from the time you have an initial prospect that comes through whatever marketing channels you might have the pipeline in your technology is meant to help track the progress of that prospect throughout your pipeline from the time you make the initial contact to proposal to bidding to ultimately winning that prospect as a customer crm software also allows you to manage your sales organization so if you're a larger organization with a larger sales team it's a way to manage metrics related to everything from who you're going to assign prospects to and who's managing what prospects within your pipeline it's also a way to have visibility to and manage what all the sales reps are managing in terms of their pipeline and their success rates their win rates their reasons for winning the reasons for losing and really helping you to evaluate trends on what you're doing well as a sales organization and what you could be doing better [Music] crm software also is a way to provide bids or quotes or proposals for your potential customers so it's a way for you to access the information you need to be able to provide a quote whether it's based on labor hours or materials or whatever the case may be it's a way for you to have visibility and access to information that allows you to provide that quote to your potential customers and crm software really follows the entire cycle through until they become a customer and ultimately convert those proposals into actual orders another common function in use and purpose of crm software is to track commissions so if you have a sales team that's paid on the amount of business that they're closing and the amount of revenue they generate it's a way to track a percentage or whatever bonus or compensation is resulting from the results of your sales organization [Music] and crm software isn't just about selling it's not just about taking a prospect and getting them to the point of buying whatever product or service it is you're trying to sell them it's also about converting them into a customer and providing a positive customer experience so many crm systems in the marketplace today also allow you to track customer service contacts so after the sale if the customer reaches back out to your organization and speaks to either the sales rep or customer service representative it'll allow you to track that information so you can see the history of that customer's experience with your organization crm software is often used to also provide analytics so what are the analytics of the trends that are happening in our sales processes what are the customer behaviors and the prospect behaviors that are emerging and what trends can we identify in our marketing and sales efforts and so really providing the data and the insights into our sales processes is another important function of crm now one of the early pioneers of crm software is a company called siebel siebel is a product that was acquired by oracle many years ago it's not quite as common or quite as popular as it once was and since then there have been a whole host of other crm systems out there that have emerged salesforce is probably the most popular one one of the first software as a service cloud-based crm systems but in addition to salesforce you also have sage you also have sugar and other types of software vendors that provide crm capabilities and in fact for more on this topic i've included a top 10 list in the links below of the top 10 crm systems in the marketplace but these are just a few examples in the meantime [Music] now finally one of the common questions we get related to crm software is how is crm different from erp or enterprise resource planning software and they're distinctly different but also similar technologies crm is focused on the sales and customer experience processes whereas erp covers everything in an organization everything from financials to inventory management to warehouse management project management whatever functions and departments and capabilities you have in your organization generally erp systems are designed to try to address most of those needs which also includes crm so crm is one potential module within a broader erp system so oftentimes what organizations are faced with in terms of a decision is do we want to go find a crm system that specializes in crm and does it really really well and goes very very deep in that capability or do we want to find a broader erp solution that can do many things including crm maybe not as well as a standalone crm system but you get the benefit of a single system across your entire enterprise so that's the main difference between erp and crm and which is best for you all comes down to your priorities and your needs as an organization so these are just some of the things to think about as you try to think about what is crm and more importantly what is crm or what could crm mean to my organization i've also included some links below in addition to the top 10 crm systems i mentioned before i've also included our 2021 digital transformation report which is meant to provide system rankings and best practices and other types of information that's meant to help you through your digital transformation journey so i hope you found this information useful and hope you have a great day