Types of CRM systems

CRM is categorised on the basis of tactics, a firm is taking in implementing CRM strategy. The two types are:

Operational CRM and Analytical CRM.

While, Operational CRM is concerned with all the operations and processes that directly deal with customers, Analytical CRM is concerned with all the operations and processes that do not directly deal with customers.

Operational CRM
It is also known as front-office CRM as it involves areas where direct customer contact occurs. It enables and streamlines communications to and from customers. It is mainly focused on automation and improvement of business processes which are customer-facing or customer supporting. This operational part of CRM typically involves automation of three general areas of business:
Sales-force Automation, Customer service Automation, and Marketing automation.

Operational CRM - Sales-force

Automation

Sales-force Automation is the use of software to automate the business tasks of sales, including order processing, contact management, information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation. It enables businesses to more effectively manage the entire sales cycle, from lead generation to post-sales service and support. It helps sales representative especially field sales force to manage their customer accounts, track opportunities, establish and monitor the sales pipeline , and organise their contact lists.

Operational CRM -

Marketing automation.

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes (that would otherwise have been performed manually) much more efficient, and makes some new processes possible.

Campaign management is the planning, executing, tracking and analysis of direct marketing campaigns. Marketing automation Software enables users to explore their customer data in order to develop targeted communications and offers. Segmentation, in some cases, is possible at the level of the individual customer. Unique offers may be made to a single customer at an appropriate point in time.

Operational CRM -

Customer Service automation

Service automation allows companies to automate their service

operations, whether delivered through a call centre, a contact centre, the web or face-to-face in the field.
Customer service automation Software enables companies to manage and coordinate their service-related in-bound and out-bound communications across all channels. It helps you to manage customer complaints centrally. Several technologies are common in service automation. Call-routing software can be used to direct inbound calls to the most appropriate handler. Technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR) enable customers to interact with company computers.

Analytical CRM
It is also known as Back-office CRM as it involves understanding the customer activities that occurred in the front-office. It involves analysing deeply the customer data and unwrap or disclose the essential information that can used strategically to take appropriate long- term decisions.

Analysis is done in every aspect of business as described below:

Customer Analytics- It provides a better view of customer behavior and by assessing customers profiles and creates an exact understanding of all the customers. Marketing Analytics- This helps discovering new market opportunities and seeks their potential values. Sales Analytics- It provides essential environment to plan, simulate and predict sales volumes and profits by constantly analyzing organizational sales behavior. It helps in pipelining all the selling opportunities in an efficient way by indulging and improving the sales cycle. Service Analytics- Analytical CRM has major role in enhancing the services. Channel Analytics- This type of analysis helps to determine the customer behavior on channel preferences, like web channel, personal interaction, telephone channel etc.