CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is defined in many different ways. After many years of experience and involvement with CRM projects, CRMnow adopted the following definition as most accurately stating the essence of CRM. This definition was recently agreed to by a panel of CRM industry experts and published by CRMguru.com:

"Customer Relationship Management is a business strategy to select and manage customers to optimize long term value. CRM requires a customer-centric business philosophy and culture to support effective marketing, sales, and services processes. CRM applications can enable effective customer relationship management, provided that an enterprise has the right leadership, strategy and culture."

The advent of the Internet has vastly extended the capabilities of CRM applications to offer a collaborative environment between businesses and their customers, partners and employees. This capability is often referred to as eCRM or eBusiness. We believe these terms are synonymous with the original acronym -- CRM.