“what does CRM mean to you? most definitions I find on the web are next to useless”
Kingsley2

He had quite a few responses, mine was as follows:

“@kingsley I would define CRM as any system used to manage customer touchpoints and value derived from those interactions-products/email/etc”
colinloretz

My response to Kingsley was very short. It had to be in order to stay within the 140 character limit of Twitter. As he pointed out in his reply, Twitter’s restraint can be useful for receiving a clear definition of a complex system like CRM, which if you haven’t decoded it yet, is customer relationship management usually applied to customer relationship management software. If you Google “CRM” or its expanded form, you’ll find all sorts of definitions, each one more convoluted than the last. It doesn’t need to be complex.

Customers provide a business with value. Using a grocery store as an example, optimizing touchpoints, anywhere a business and customer interact, can increase variables such as how many times a customer visits the store or how much they spend during each trip, resulting in a higher customer lifetime value.

Some other responses to Kingsley’s questions included:

“CRM is philosophy & strategy that puts the customer at the center, maximizing long-term value for both customer and business”
Gokubi

“CRM requires concrete, measurable goals and clear reporting to validate increasing ‘value.’”
dschach

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supptd.by a system & technology, designed to improve human interactions in a biz. environment”
pgreenbe

And at a very high level, which probably falls in line with many company mission statements:

“CRM will help you save the world…if that’s what you want to do.”
Gokubi

I spend a lot of time developing solutions using Salesforce.com, customer relationship software that is offered using a monthly software-as-a-service model. Many people would probably argue that being a programmer, knowledgeable in Javascript, HTML and Salesforce’s own Apex code, a derivative of Java, is all you need to develop solutions for the platform. An education in computer science will prepare most programmers for the type of logic that is needed in day-to-day business scenarios. Many businesses could actually benefit from a programmatic approach to business. In fact, applying principles from open source and agile development philosophies to business can have amazing results. That discussion is for another article.

Software can help a business but technology should not be thrown at a problem to make it go away. In most of the businesses I’ve worked with, there have always been real world processes to optimize before implementing the technology.

Real world experience can be one of the best teachers, but adding textbook learning from areas like Six Sigma or project management to a developer’s skill set will allow a small team, or even an individual, to optimize a business that can be further supported by technology like Salesforce.com or Microsoft Sharepoint.