CRM

Short for customer relationship management, CRM encompasses all aspects of interaction a company has with its customers, whether it be sales or service-related requests. Having a CRM system helps your company remain in contact with your customers, automate e-mail campaigns and sales, manage support, and create sales forecasts and detailed reports.

Difference between CRM and ERP

A CRM system often only deals with the interaction between your company and its customers. CRM helps automate, streamline, and track those interactions with your customers. An ERP (enterprise resource planning) system goes beyond only handling the customer tasks and can incorporate your employee, money, manufacturing, distribution, and your CRM system into a central location.

Small businesses may only need CRM, as they're more affordable and don't have enough systems that need to communicate with each other. However, larger companies and enterprises need ERP to stay competitive and operate efficiently, as they often have more systems in use.

Examples of CRM systems

Below are examples of CRM systems listed in alphabetical order, some of which are designed for certain business types. When applicable, we also list the types of business that might be used with that CRM system.

• Airtable
• Freshsales CRM
• Hubspot CRM
• Insightly CRM
• Jobber (service companies)
• Lofty (real estate)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Monday.com
• Pipedrive CRM
• Salesforce CRM
• Service Autopilot (service companies)
• Sugar CRM
• Zoho CRM

B2B, Business terms, Computer acronyms, ERP, Relationship, SaaS