Often I am asked how CRM software can help various departments with their CRM business strategy.  Here is a short list of the benefits CRM software can provide your departments:

Sales:

• Provide greater visibility into the sales pipeline
• More efficiently and accurately report on sales pipeline  
• Better track probability of close, products, lead source, status and competitors
• Eliminate the need to browse for exceptions by automating alerting users as to the exceptions (for example, quotes requiring follow-up and customers that have not ordered in xxx days)
• Reduce attrition through fading customer alerts
• Qualify prospects with a standard qualification process
• Manage customer and prospect relationships from virtually anywhere via the web and wireless devices including BlackBerry and Pocket PCs
• Increase average customer value by increasing the number of orders per year and the size of orders

Marketing:

• Streamline marketing and sales campaigns 
• Create customized marketing campaigns
• Better analyze ROI of marketing campaigns
• View campaign results in real time to better analyze performance of campaigns in progress
• Evaluate forecasted vs. actual return for each lead source, region or media type
• Automate distribution of leads
• Automate lead follow-up
• Coordinate between marketing and sales

Service:

• Quickly resolve customer questions, issues and requests
• Reduce cost of each customer transaction
• Provide everybody in your company with access to the same customer data
• Develop a knowledge base for future problem solving

In addition to the department specific benefits, you can also improve process and efficiency throughout your organization:

Process:

• Automate the sales cycle
• Standardizes and automates processes (such as sales processes based on product line, deal size, territory or lead type)
• Ensures that procedures and processes are being followed
• Standardization of quoting practices
• Increased quote conversion through automated follow-up and best practices
• Reduce the amount of time spent to generate a quote

Efficiency:

• Shorten new employee ramp-up time with data visibility in one place
• Save time by eliminating multiple sources of data and auto populating all systems at the same time
• Provide a single view of the customer that allows everyone to view all interactions with the customer and the customers purchasing behaviors