CRM system stands for customer relationship management system and can roughly be explained as a system which enables the management of a business’ interactions with customers. CRM systems allow companies to create strategies that help increase customer satisfaction. Through a combination of people, processes and technology CRM systems allows companies to manage their relations with customers. In order to implement a CRM system all department, those that are involved with the customers and those that are behind the scene, have to collaborate in unison to increase profitability by increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing operational cost that are found to be unnecessary after extensive customer information is obtained and analyzed.
In order to implement an effective CRM system or in other words become customer focused one needs to watch out to four major steps. These steps in chronological order are communal coordination, serial coordination, symbiotic coordination and integral coordination. Though “skipping stages might appear to speed up the process, in the end it denies the organization the sure foundation it needs to build a lasting customer-focused mind-set.” In order to get a better understanding of customers in order to increase efficiency and profits companies must first create a “centralized repository of customer information.” By doing so companies collect all the necessary information and standardize it throughout the firm then organize the collected information by customer in order to be able to get the answers to whatever possible question the firm might wish to ask customers. Then firms must begin to draw inferences from the collected customer information which enables firms to gain insight into customers from their past behaviors. From these inferences the firm should then develop an understanding of the potential future behaviors of