CRM, short for Customer Relationship Management, refers both to an organisational approach and to a category of software designed to centralise all of a company's interactions with its customers and prospects. The goal is to maintain a single, shared view — contact records, interaction history, sales opportunities, quotes and orders — so that the sales, marketing and support teams all rely on consistent, up-to-date information rather than on scattered spreadsheets that are hard to keep reliable.
At the heart of a CRM is sales-cycle management in the form of a pipeline: opportunities move through successive stages (first contact, qualification, proposal, negotiation, then won or lost). This view, often presented as a Kanban board, helps prioritise sales activity, forecast revenue and track metrics such as the conversion rate or the average sales-cycle length. A CRM also handles issuing quotes and converting them into orders once a deal is agreed.
Beyond sales, a full CRM also covers marketing (contact segmentation, campaigns, lead tracking), after-sales service and performance analysis through key indicators and dashboards. Well integrated, it becomes the relationship hub of an ERP: connected to invoicing, inventory management and accounting, it avoids re-keying and keeps customer data reliable from end to end. This is often described as a 360-degree view of the customer, shared across every department.
At eyeot, the CRM solution follows this approach of a centralised customer relationship connected to the other ERP modules.