From Project

[edit] Microsoft CRM Sales

[edit] Sales Process Automation

The concept of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) evolved out of Sales Process Automation (SPA). SPA software came about from the need to enhance the efficiency of the sales team and provide management with sales forecasting report capability. SPA remains a solid pillar in the CRM strategy.

[edit] The Beginning of CRM

Increases in closed deals led to increases in the amount of knowledge that had to be maintained by the sales people. All too often this information was stored by unique means by each sales person. Getting information from the sales team was difficult due the various proprietary formats involved, making sales forecasting and pipeline estimates difficult at best.

Getting important client related information to the sales teams also presented its own set of problems. Accounting systems weren’t designed to be sales tools and didn’t support the features that the sales teams needed.

The lack of a Sales Process Automation system also presented an operational risk. Salespeople that left an organization often took highly valuable and proprietary historical and sales information with them. Quite often this meant that the organization had to reestablish the relationship with the client from scratch, and left organizations resorting to reverse engineering customer information.