Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Top Five Customer Relationship Management Software

Nowadays, almost every business understands the importance of CRM and the fact that CRM software is a must. CRM software tracks when, how and why a customer interacts with the business. Indeed, it proves very beneficial in helping a business to identify and understand its customer's needs and expectations. In turn, it leads to increased satisfaction as the business focus on customer’s requirements. This of course, helps in building customer relationships, which in the long run lead to customer loyalty.

Despite of the fact, whether your business is big or small, your sales personnel need to keep track of leads and you need reporting that will give you answers to questions that drive your sales. But with so many options available, which features should you look for to really fit with your business' goals. From the customer's point of view, successful CRM software means that every time they need to contact the business, the service assistant they reach, already know everything about them and their customer history. As a result, the company in question is able to target and tailor their current and future products successfully to their customer's needs and shopping habits. There a number of CRM software available in the market and few of the prominent ones are listed hereunder:

1. Relentacrm.com
2. http://funnel.com
3. http://highrisecrm.com/
4. http://salesforce.com/
5. http://sugarcrm.com/

1) Relentacrm.com: The Relenta product is an online CRM. All the information is stored in its hosted service, thus extenuating the requirement of an extra server. It has been built differently with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) philosophy. It lets you share email between multiple users, so that it doesn't matter if a co-worker is on vacation or located many time zones away. You can view messages associated with any contact and instantly catch up on any activity that's taken place. Relenta is fast, efficient, mean and lean software.

2) funnel.com: The sales funnel is a collection of various types of sales opportunities. It takes on its own unique characteristics because it's relationship driven. Like a family has character traits, so does a sales funnel. It's called a sales funnel because of the progressive relationship between the quantity and quality of sales opportunities in a funnel.

3) highrisecrm.com: Highrise is basic, web-based CRM software that works great in coordination with Basecamp. Its main features include sharing contacts, assigning tasks, keeping history and making cases. A great feature is that you can add information, tasks and contacts to Highrise via email. In addition, you can assign permission to everyone, specific groups or specific people using dropdown menus. It lets you keep a track of all the phone calls, emails, notes, follow-ups, and tasks. Highrise is the right, more thoughtful way to keep track of the people, conversations, and tasks that are the lifelines of your business.

4) salesforce.com: With Salesforce CRM and its cloud-computing model, you can mind your customers and as well as your budget at the same time. Salesforce CRM puts an end to the frantic merging of spreadsheets and constant worry about missing forecasts. With instant access to reliable, real-time metrics on pipeline, forecast, and productivity, you never have any surprises. Salesforce CRM solutions deliver proven results and bring peace of mind.

5) sugarcrm.com: It offers commercial open source customer relationship management applications for various companies around the world. It is designed for the budget conscious businesses looking to support the technology and that too without making a major investment in the first place. With Sugar CRM software, your business can track, manage and share customer information and sales leads in one place. By providing a comprehensive view of customer communications and contact information to all users, your staff can more easily and consistently follow up with customers and sales opportunities, in turn, helping to increase revenues and improve business efficiency and professionalism.

Whatever you select, always make sure that you have researched all the options. With CRM Software being such a hot thing in the business community, there are a lot smaller players that are doing some interesting things. Be sure to check out all your options.