Contact and client management belong to customer relationship management (CRM). CRM applications are especially critical for sales, where managing customer relationships is key. However, conventional client management software can no longer handle all of a sales organisation’s requirements.

That’s why companies are replacing limited on-premises contact management software with salesforce.com’s Web-based CRM solution. Salesforce CRM integrates an array of advanced contact management features into CRM, available to everyone in the organisation via the Internet. This results in more productive tracking, sharing, and analysis of customer information than conventional contact management software can deliver. With Salesforce CRM, you gain the power to centralise, share, manage, and analyse all your contact management data, free from tedious manual processes.

Contact Management Software-as- a -Service

salesforce.com’s cloud-based CRM solution makes workgroup contact management and collaboration faster and more efficient.

• Work from any Web browser. Salesforce CRM doesn’t tie you to a single computer. All you need is a Web browser and an Internet connection. This makes it easier to work from home or on the road&mdash. You can access mobile Salesforce CRM via popular devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone, and update and annotate contact management information instantly, while customer interactions are fresh in your mind. Once entered in Salesforce CRM, authorised users can view your business-related notes and data.
• Contact management with complete, real ti me views. With salesforce.com your team automatically share and report on contact- and customer-related activities, tasks, and calendar events in real time. This puts Salesforce CRM in a class by itself, since client management software tools simply can’t match its complete customer view or its easy team collaboration.
  With up-to-date, readily available information-rich contact management profiles, Salesforce CRM delivers significant benefits such as complete management visibility into contact and customer histories; higher productivity; better and faster collaboration; less chance of leads falling through the cracks; fewer manual processes; and less reliance on paper and spreadsheets.
• Contact management that keeps private information private. With Salesforce CRM, contacts not linked to an account remain invisible, regardless of your organisation’s sharing model. Only the owner of the contact and administrators can view it. Contact management sharing and workflow rules do not apply to information that is private.

Eliminating the Drawbacks of On-Premises Client Management Software

• Contact management without IT headaches. Sharing on-premises client management software over a local area network (LAN) brings costs and extra work, such as IT consultants and staff plus server hardware and maintenance. But salesforce.com is delivered as an online application via an Internet connection and Web browser, so there’s no additional hardware or software to install. And it’s easy for non-technical business users to manage on their own..

Contact Management that Work With You

Many business people use Microsoft Outlook for corporate email. The good news is you won’t have to give up the convenience of Outlook to enjoy the greater scope of contact management features in Salesforce CRM. The two applications are already integrated.

• Contact management with seamless Outlook integration. You can keep using Outlook for email and calendaring, safe in the knowledge that Salesforce CRM will capture all your contact management data for organisation-wide visibility. There’s no need for cutting and pasting, and you can even embed Salesforce CRM directly into Outlook, and navigate to any Salesforce CRM tab using folders available right in the Outlook window.
• Contact management with maximum ease and flexibility. You can log incoming/outgoing Outlook messages in accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, or cases in Salesforce CRM. It’s also easy to share contact, appointment book, and task information between the two applications.
  As a result, busy sales reps get a complete customer picture at a glance—including contacts, assets, account history, the latest news, and more.

Proactive Contact Management

Unlike typical contact management software systems, Salesforce CRM does a lot more than merely capture leads. It moves you to the all-important next step of pursuing them in the most productive, efficient, and effective way so you can convert them to sales..

With the Lead Search and Merge features reps identify prior interactions with a lead before following up. You can also merge duplicate leads with existing leads, contacts, and accounts. Based on customised business rules, you can set up lead queues and lead assignment rules to automatically route leads to the right sales organisation or rep. Finally, you can monitor leads end-to-end—, with capabilities that include automatic date/time stamping, campaign or lead source tracking, lead status changes, and lead activity management.

Which would you like to work with? The contact management power of cloud-based Salesforce CRM, or the limited features of conventional, on-premises contact management software?