The Complete Guide to Accelerating Sales Force Performance

Introduction

Customer relationship management is the set of tools and processes a firm uses to identify, attract, and retain customers and to leverage its relationships with its customers. Increasingly, CRM is becoming synonymous with the use of technology to manage customer interactions and transactions, and this is the focus of this chapter.

Most large firms have moved aggressively to automate the ''back office,'' or systems for accounting, order entry, finance, and production. The current frontier is automation of the ''front office,'' which refers to functions such as sales, marketing, and customer service.

The combination of the speed and storage capabilities of computers with the connectivity of the Internet provides a powerful linkage ...