Customer relationship management (CRM) can help you manage all interactions with your customers. Its goal is to reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing, optimizing, and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.
CRM allows you to make the sales cycle a defined process and once optimized, you can leverage the knowledge you have regarding your customers to close sales more profitably.
CRM is not just a sales tool. It can manage all interactions with the customer enabling client-facing employees to make expedited and educated decisions about strategic efforts in the sales, marketing, and customer service areas.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online brings the CRM landscape to a new high point. At a fixed $44/month/user (one year contract required) you get all of the features and capabilities of this feature rich online solution. Salesforce.com may have less expensive plans, but by the time you add the features you want and need you are probably 20-50% more expensive than CRM 2011 Online. If you want to compare features you want in salesforce.com vs the fully inclusive CRM 2011 take a look at this cost calculator.