CRM- Customer Relationship Management or Contact Relationship Management

What is CRM?


is it Contact relationship management or is it customer realtionship management. are they one or the same?? if its different , how is it different?.

Well i just came across this terminologies long time back but was resurfaced in the memory while going through various sites of the CRM application and software. As per my understanding contact relationship management would constitute relationship managments with all contacts, they might be customers, or vendors or suppliers or associates etc well depending on how how you define your contacts while customer relationship managment is more focussed on customers and more relevant to salespersons.

There seem to be lot of english out there which says the same thing but is conveyed differently. There has been a lot of buzz about CRM few years back but it seems that the buzz has been quite similar to the dot com bubble. Trying to decipher the reasons and the reality about the buzz. We come know what we read and we come across on the internet and media. Has CRM really not delivered what it promised or has it. I don't know but the reason i am writing all this is because i am trying to understand ..is it marketing that is creating all this buzz or ..is it the optimism of the technocrats that really builds up such hype? whatever the reason .. i will be putting up some basics thoughts of CRM practices that might have existed before the word and software came up.

Actually what i am really thinking is that do SMB segment really need such softwares or would they do without them. well i am trying to explore both the possibilities of having a CRM software and the situation without the CRM software.

Welcome any thoughts and data that can be added on to this discussion.