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What Is CRM?

What Is Hosted CRM?
Hosted CRM, also known as on-demand CRM, provides a simpler, faster, and more affordable way for businesses to automate customer relationships.

With hosted CRM, all hardware and software components are purchased, installed, tested, and maintained by a third-party hosting provider at a remote site. The hosting service provider also stores and manages all customer-related data. Companies need nothing more than a standard Web browser to access and utilize the CRM application and its features.

What Is On-Premise CRM?
On-premise CRM, also known as licensed, on-site, or in-house CRM, is a customer relationship management application that is housed at a client’s location and managed by its own employees.

Internal IT personnel are responsible for installing all hardware and software components, integrating the solution with existing systems, deploying it to end-users, and storing all related data. System administration, upgrades, and other routine maintenance are also performed by IT staff.

What Is Enterprise CRM?
Enterprise customer relationship management is a family of tightly-integrated applications that span both front- and back-office operations throughout a company.

These solutions – which include sales force, marketing, contact center, and help desk automation systems – seamlessly coordinate and consolidate the disparate, repetitive processes and siloed data that often exist across multiple customer-facing business units.

With enterprise CRM, all sales, marketing, service, and support staff can share information and work in sync to build stronger, more profitable customer relationships.

What Is Small Business CRM?
Small business CRM, or “CRM lite,” provides basic contact management capabilities, without all the complex functions that only larger organizations require. They are designed to support limited groups of simultaneous users (usually 100 or less) over LANs, rather than large user bases spread out over distributed, multi-server networks. Some of the more advanced capabilities that come standard with enterprise-scale CRM packages are usually offered as separately-purchased add-on options.

Many small business customer relationship management applications are available as hosted or on-demand solutions. This approach makes CRM more affordable, allowing smaller businesses with tighter budgets to avoid up-front fees and pay only for the services and features they use. Additionally, hosted CRM eliminates long, complicated implementations, so smaller businesses can roll-out their solution quickly, with minimal impact on IT resources.