Contact management software started out as a way for individuals to create an electronic database of customers and business contacts. As companies have searched for ways to consolidate, streamline, and share customer information, client management software tools have greatly expanded in scope. Nowadays, contact management systems let people and businesses record and track customer, client, and supplier interactions, including emails, faxes, calendars, faxes, project- and sales-related documents, and more.
Businesses have come to understand that they can boost productivity and lower costs by managing all this information with a single, integrated platform rather than a proliferation of client management software tools with different data collection schemes. As a result, the older method of using Microsoft Outlook with a simplified database has become largely obsolete.
Contact and client management comprise part of a much larger business activity: customer relationship management (CRM). CRM applications have revolutionized the way companies conduct business and provide customer support. They are especially critical for sales, where relationships are key. However, conventional client management software provides just a small portion of the capabilities needed to automate and optimize a sales organization’s contact management activities and resources.
That’s why so many companies have replaced limited on-premises contact management software with salesforce.com’s Web-based CRM solution. Salesforce CRM integrates an array of advanced contact management features into the larger sphere of CRM. Because users access Salesforce CRM through the “cloud,” (Internet), its capabilities and data are always available to everyone in the organization. This approach results in more productive tracking, sharing, and analysis of customer information than is possible with conventional contact management software. With Salesforce CRM, you gain the power to centralize, share, manage, and analyze all your contact management data, free from tedious manual processes and administrative hassles.
With salesforce.com’s cloud-based CRM solution, workgroup contact management and collaboration is much faster and more efficient.
Over the years, many business professionals have grown accustomed to using Microsoft Outlook for corporate email. You don’t have to give up this convenience to take advantage of the greater scope of contact management features in Salesforce CRM: the two applications are already integrated.
Unlike typical contact management software systems, Salesforce CRM does a lot more than merely capture leads. It moves you to the all-important next step of pursuing them in the most productive, efficient, and effective way so you can maximize their conversion to opportunities and ultimately, to successful sales.
The Lead Search and Merge features let reps easily identify prior interactions with a lead before following up. Duplicate leads can easily be merged with existing leads, contacts, and accounts. You can set up lead queues and lead assignment rules to automatically route leads to the right sales organization or rep based on customized business rules. For the ultimate in contact management, you can monitor leads end-to-end—from creation to conversion—with capabilities that include automatic date/time stamping, campaign or lead source tracking, lead status changes, and lead activity management.
Ultimately, there’s no meaningful contest between the contact management power of cloud-based Salesforce CRM and the limited features of conventional, on-premises contact management software.
Bring social intelligence to your sales process. Gain insights from popular social media sites—like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Klout—right within Salesforce to help you increase productivity. And get a complete picture of your customer with everything you need in one place—including account history, key contacts, customer communications, and internal account discussions.
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Tap into activity on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter and you’ll always know what your customers "like.” That makes it easier for you to build stronger, longer-lasting relationships and close more deals.
The Sales Cloud provides quick access to all critical account data, including key contacts, communication history, shared documents, partners in the account, and more. And get a complete picture of every contact, from social insights to campaign history to opportunities they're involved in.
Successful selling involves people from across the organization. Collaborate in the feed on account and contact records, in customer groups, on tasks and activities, and more. Need to fill in some blanks? Data.com provides full account and contact information, including all your key critical customer interactions.
Whether at your desk or on the road, you can get full access to all of the account and contact data you need to keep deals moving. Salesforce Touch pulls in valuable social profile information from your accounts and contacts, giving you deep insights so that you can walk into that important sales call with confidence.
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