Contact Relationship Management (CRM) systems are emerging tools that help people and organizations succeed. They do so by making it more efficient to create and maintain relationships with the people you have in your database.
According to LinkedIn’s “The State of Sales 2016” report, "Success is closely tied to an organization’s willingness to adopt to intelligence and social tools. This trend will gain strength over time as more professionals across all generations continue to leverage products that help them to build and manage relationships."
As they were originally developed around the premise of helping fortune 500 companies successfully manage high loads of customer inquiries on the fly; these systems are no longer purely tied to the adage of “businesses” to “consumer” relationships.
The most effective nonprofits, advocacy groups, cause-related campaigns and the like, have attributed their success to the implementation of these systems in their organizations.
CRM hasn’t always been the robust, stand-alone software that so many organizations rely on today. Over the past four decades, it has evolved out of a variety of other business programs. During that time, the CRM industry has undergone sea-changes and shakeups that could have derailed the entire concept.