Analyst Insight: CM or CRM

Rex

Analyst Insight: CM or CRM

Rex

Recent analyst research helps SMBs make the choice between CM and CRM*:
   Examines how the need for customer interaction automation solutions, such as CM or CRM, has become a larger priority in a challenging economy
   Summarizes research findings regarding the key characteristics of businesses choosing either CM or CRM including:
     Interaction models (how businesses interact with their customers)
     Top pressures and business challenges
     Top strategies to improve sales productivity
     Adoption of top sales capabilities

Rex

CM：
A single internal point of contact/sales rep interacts with each customer. (One to One, One to Many)
ACT! by Sage provides sales force automation features including a complete picture of each relationship, related contacts, activity history, and opportunity tracking

Rex

CRM
Multiple departments such as Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Tech Support interacts with your customers. (Many to One, Many to Many)
Sage CRM provides a capable feature set across sales, marketing, and customer service to help ensure cross-departmental collaboration.
Sage SalesLogix provides an advanced feature set across sales, marketing, service, and support to help ensure cross-departmental collaboration

Rex

CM
Customer data is fragmented in e-mail, spreadsheets, post-it notes, paper files, and your sales reps’ memory.
ACT! by Sage consolidates all customer information including contacts, activity history, future activities, emails, attachments, and more into a single repository.

Rex

CRM
Customer data is fragmented across departments, with little or no visibility into customer interactions in different departments
Sage CRM consolidates customer interactions from sales, marketing, and customer service into a single customer record, creating visibility into interactions from different departments
Sage SalesLogix consolidates customer interactions from sales, marketing, customer service, and tech support into a single customer record, creating visibility into interactions from different departments.

Rex

CRM
For our larger, dispersed sales team, it would help if there was a central repository right within our CRM system to help provide consistent, just-in-time product knowledge and competitive information.
Sage SalesLogix includes a Sales Library where you can store product collateral and datasheets for quick access and a place to store competitive product information in a pick-list with associated competitive weaknesses that can be selected for each sales opportunity.

Rex

CM
We need the flexibility to customize layouts with new fields and tabs, and tailor the way we interact with customers.
ACT! by Sage provides the ability to create custom fields and tabs, custom sales processes, activity series, letter and e-mail templates, reports, and more.

Rex

CRM
We have robust customization needs to support our unique business processes and workflows across different departments.

Sage CRM can be customized to fit changing business requirements through codeless administration tools and easy-to-use wizards that minimize the need for expensive development resources.
Sage SalesLogix can be extensively customized to mirror distinctive customer processes using codeless tools and wizards. Or, use familiar development tools such as Visual Studio .NET for more in-depth customizations.