Advicelet benefit: Getting a basic understanding of how even the most basic customer relationship management system can benefit your company and increase sales is essential training for anyone looking for small business growth.

Customer relationship management as a concept is generally understood now by most knowledge workers in both large and small business. Whilst the term is understood, it still feels like a bit of a black art – a potentially complex database set up for minimal gains… If Tesco and Walmart have one and can mine customer data to send them pertinent deals through the post – then surely it’s not the thing smaller businesses can take advantage of?

Well – we’re here today to dispel that myth. CRM systems have moved on from the early elitest days. Of course, some are more complex than others – but at the end of the day – businesses who don’t have some kind of customer management system – makeshift or otherwise are missing a trick.

In today’s advicelet, we’re fortunate to have CRM expert with us in the studio. George Bliss, a CRM guru based here here in the UK has been in the CRM business for 6 years and has 200+ implementations under his belt now – so he really understands this stuff. Today we’re going to explore the benefits of actually implementing a CRM system. In separate advicelets on the following two Mondays – we’ll look at the practicalities of selecting and implementing such a system.

Related articles

• Customer Intimacy, CRM & Thought Leadership (myventurepad.com)
• Success with Customer Relationship Management (customer-relations.suite101.com)
• SugarCRM opens up to the cloud (news.cnet.com)
• Microsoft CRM Integrating with ZoomInfo – Microsoft Dynamics Platform for Healthcare (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)