CRM

CRM (customer relationship management) is a business strategy that blends processes, people, and technology to help you attract sales prospects, convert them into customers, and keep existing customers satisfied and loyal. The goal of CRM is to learn as much as possible about each customer's attitudes, needs, and behavior to provide them optimal service and retain the relationship. Because business success is all about customers and their needs, it's difficult for companies to achieve and maintain leadership and profitability without a sustained focus on CRM.

CRM reaches into many areas within the organization, including sales, customer service, and marketing. Salesforce.com offers a technology solution for all those areas and more. With our CRM software as a service and Force.com cloud-computing platform, you can manage customers while minding your budget—a key balance to achieve in today's economic climate. Our CRM solutions also lead the way in terms of speed of deployment and time to value: Compared with conventional CRM software, Salesforce CRM can be up and running—and delivering critical business results—within 30 days.

CRM Solutions

CRM solutions support sales and marketing to ensure that both work seamlessly together toward a unified goal: taking your business success to the next level.

With CRM solutions from salesforce.com, you can streamline and automate business processes to give all employees a 360-degree view of your customers plus insight into critical sales and customer metrics. This approach keeps everyone focused on retaining current customers and attracting new prospects.

CRM Solutions for Sales and Marketing. CRM improves lead generation and channel marketing, optimizes lead management, and delivers real-time account-related information, which keeps sales reps productive. Our CRM solutions also provide in-depth insight into sales pipelines, and analysis tools to determine which strategies and campaigns are effective and which aren't. With Salesforce CRM, your teams can focus on generating revenue instead of outmoded, manual administrative tasks.
CRM Solutions for Activity Management. With CRM, you can view all customer data, including transactions, calls, and email. You can also readily access important information about all customer interactions, manage tasks, and effectively follow up on any actions.
CRM Solutions for Service and Support. CRM also helps collect consumer requests for support from all channels, whether it's assigning cases to the appropriate agent or team, problem-solving, escalating support cases, or helping customers find solutions via the company Web site. CRM also ensures service agreements are adhered to and identifies ways to enhance the customer experience.

Most important salesforce.com's CRM solutions offer award-winning ease of use and point-and-click customization. With all these advantages, there's no better CRM solution for your company than Salesforce CRM.

CRM Software vs. Web-Based CRM

Web-based CRM (also known as online CRM, hosted CRM, on-demand CRM, and cloud-computing CRM) has overtaken traditional, on-premises CRM software as more and more companies opt for the benefits of cloud computing.

In today's economy, it's imperative for reps to pursue every possible sales lead, follow up on every opportunity, and ensure customer satisfaction with every interaction. Salesforce.com‘s cloud-computing, pay-as-you-go CRM model delivers these capabilities at a dramatically lower cost than conventional CRM software.

Web CRM promises rapid time to value. By eliminating the need for up-front investment and providing faster results, Salesforce CRM delivers faster ROI and lower cost of ownership than traditional CRM software options, boosting your success.
Web-based CRM offers quick deployment. Salesforce CRM can be deployed in a matter of days or weeks, compared to a year or longer with typical CRM software.
Hosted CRM makes customization much easier. Even non-technical users can tailor our CRM solutions with just mouse-clicks, for ease of customization unmatched by other CRM solutions.
On-demand CRM provides unlimited scalability. Salesforce.com uses a multitenant architecture, which lets you scale your implementation quickly without incurring elevated costs or waiting weeks or months.
Web CRM features painless upgrades. Multitenancy also makes upgrade headaches a thing of the past: new features and capabilities are added to your CRM solution automatically and almost instantaneously. You're always on the latest version with our CRM software as a service. Upgrades of Salesforce CRM are as painless as those of Web-based email or networking sites: the transition happens "virtually," with nothing changed or lost.

To summarize:

On-premises CRM software. With the outdated "client/server" model for on-premise CRM software, you must invest in expensive IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, and software. You also need to hire a team of IT professionals to install, deploy, maintain, and upgrade the infrastructure and software.
Web CRM solutions. Whether it's called Web-based CRM, hosted CRM, on-demand CRM, software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM, or cloud-computing CRM, it means the same thing: the new model for delivering CRM capabilities over the Internet. Among many other advantages, cloud-computing CRM requires no software or hardware to purchase, install, maintain, or improve. Small wonder that more than 72,500 companies worldwide are achieving unprecedented success with Salesforce CRM.

Cloud Computing and CRM

Cloud computing has the IT world abuzz. But what exactly is it, and what does it mean for CRM?

The old model of on-premises client/server CRM software is dying out, especially in times like these when companies across all industries are looking to cut unnecessary expenditures. Cloud computing is a name for the compelling strategy of delivering business software over the Internet and paying only for use rather than purchasing expensive licenses. The cloud-computing approach is moving the CRM software market to a subscription-based rather than an ownership model—freeing companies from the costs and complexities of purchasing, implementing, and maintaining software.

The widespread availability of cloud-computing CRM is enabled by a multitenant platform with a single, centrally maintained infrastructure and code base.