Explain Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

CRM is defined as aligning business strategy, corporate culture and organization, customer information, and supporting information technology so that all customer interactions promote a mutually beneficial relationship between each customer and the enterprise. Primarily, customer relationship management is a business strategy, but it is a business strategy enabled by advances in technology. Widespread implementation of customer information, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, sales force automation, and integrated point-of-sale systems have made customer information readily available in large volumes. Reduced costs and higher levels of performance for database management platforms enable us to gain access to this customer information and gain new insights into our customers and their behavior through a variety of analysis methods. Advances in contact management technology and supporting infrastructure allow us to take advantage of this information in increasingly cost-effective and innovative ways. Perhaps most significant, the Internet provides a completely new way for an enterprise to interact with its customer-the electronic channel, or the e-channel. With consumers buying everything from groceries to automobiles on the Internet and businesses beginning to shift their purchasing activities to industry-oriented virtual market spaces, the characteristics of customer interaction are forever changed.