Evolution of Crm

Evolution of CRM

Peggy Filius

University of Phoenix

CMGT/556

Ongart Ratchaworapong

March 16, 2015

Evolution of CRM

Introduction

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the practices, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifestyle. The main goal is to improve business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth by deepening and enriching relationships with their customer bases (TechTarget, 2015).

The Early Days

In the 1960”s academic researchers discovered that the “4P’s” marketing   framework, product, price, place and promotion was not as valuable for industrial or service-centric businesses when ongoing relationships were critical. When the 80’s arrived “Relationship Marketing” started to describe the new focus on understanding customer segments, delivering ongoing quality service, and achieving high customer satisfaction (Thompson, B., n.d).

 The 1980s: Digital Rolodexes and Database Marketing

CRM in the 1980’s began the onset of database marketing. Businesses were able to communicate to customers by analyzing data. The CRM systems today compared to the 80’s is much more advanced, In the 80’s data was difficult to follow because of being unorganized and difficult to update (CRM Switch, 2013).

 Robert and Kate Kestnbaum began to discover database marketing and analyzing customer information. With statistical modeling, the data then assisted in customizing communications with potential customers. By 1986, ACT! Introduced the business world to contact management software. This became a digital rolodex, which allowed for the efficient storage and organization of customer contact information. Different vendors released other programs during the 80’s. The closer to the 90’s the generation of personal computers and server/client architecture open the door for huge growth in software development (CRM Switch, 2013).

1990’s

           True CRM software became the first big step in the start of the 90’s. Businesses such as Brock Control Systems assisted in the evolution contact management software towards sales force automation (SFA). SFA using different features of database marketing, automated them and combined them with contact management. This gave businesses access to more useful customer information, as well as, automating business tasks such as, inventory control and sales tasks like customer interaction tracking (CRM Switch, 2013).

        In 1993, Siebel Systems was created by Tom Siebel who previously worked for Oracle. Siebel made an unsuccessful attempt to get the CEO of Oracle Larry Ellison to agree to package and sell their internal sales application as a standalone product. Siebel systems under Larry Siebel become the top SFA provider on the market (CRM Switch, 2013).

        1995 brought the evolution of SFA and contact management in resembling modern CRM software. Several names were used until a proper name was decided on in 1995. Terms such as enterprise customer management (ECM) and customer information system (CIS) were being used with CRM being the final name chosen (CRM Switch, 2013).