Glossary
Get familiar with the most popular IT / business terms.
Business
An organization or economic entity, that turns resources into products and/or services. It consists of people, resources, processes, and know-how and most of the businesses are established to generate profit.
Cloud
A network of servers/computers linked together, that share their resources (e.g. data storage, computing power, etc). Usually provided as an on-demand service, but sometimes charged based on the computing power that the customer consumes (applications that consume more CPU costs more than the optimized ones).
Contact Management
A process of managing contacts (business or personal) to keep them easily accessible, in one place, and well organized (through categories). This activity is very often supported by specialized software (contact manager or contact management software) that provides all the necessary features.
CRM
A long-term strategy in the field of communication, marketing, sales, and delivery/service with a primary focus on customers. The goal of this strategy is to help companies create better and more sustainable relationships with their customers to understand their needs. Compared to other approaches that focus on manufacture (of whatever we can produce), and sales (of whatever we can sell), this approach puts the customer at the center of attention. Usually, supported by CRM software.
CRM Software
A professional software tool that helps you achieve your CRM strategy. It enables you to collect, sort, and process customer data, especially their customers, business contacts, projects, ongoing business processes, and achieved sales revenues.
Customer Management
A process of managing customers/clients to keep them easily accessible, in one place, and well organized (through categories). This activity is very often a part of a long-term CRM strategy, usually supported by specialized CRM software that provides all the necessary features.
More about Customer Management
Customization
Modifying something to suit a particular individual or task. In the IT world, it’s usually related to modifying computer software to fit customers’ / end users’ needs.
Development
Process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. It is a process of writing and maintaining the source code, but in a broader sense, it includes all that is involved from the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software.
Helpdesk
A service provided by a company to help customers when they have problems with the products or services they bought or to provide them with additional information. Often, supported by a piece of software that collects all the requests (called tickets/issues), categorizes them, and tracks communications, time spent, and responsible persons. Such helpdesk software can be integrated with CRM software to provide sales reps with an overview of customers’ requests.
Implementation
A process of installing, and customizing a piece of software along with providing all the necessary professional services, such as migration of data from previous databases, training staff, and providing ongoing support. Every implementation starts with a detailed analysis of the customers’ expectations that later serves as a checklist to ensure, all requests were carefully met.
Insurance CRM
Insurance CRM software (customer relationship management) allows insurance brokers and agencies to track customers, their products and services, and all related communications (emails, notes, documents, etc). Its goal is to help them organize all data and share it across the entire team.
Usually provides the following modules – Contacts, Companies, Contracts / Renewals, Emails, Notes, Tasks, and Calendar.
Integration
By integration, the IT experts mean teaching two pieces of software to exchange data with each other.
A typical example might be an integration of web pages with CRM software that allows the website to automatically save customers’ contact details when they fill in a contact form (so that sales reps can contact the customer).
Another example might be an integration of accounting software with a CRM that automatically updates a customer’s record in the accounting software if somebody modifies it in a CRM (and vice versa). Or automatically saves an invoice into a CRM program if somebody creates it in the accounting software.
The integration is typically done through API (application programming interface).
Marketing
According to AMA, Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Marketing Management
A process of analyzing, planning, implementing, and controlling all managing marketing activities/campaigns to achieve the overall company marketing strategy. It contains processes, people, resources, etc., and is very often supported by professional marketing management tools.
More about Marketing Management
M&A CRM Software (CRM for Mergers and Acquisitions)
CRM for M&A (customer relationship management for mergers and acquisitions) allows professionals to organize contacts, deals, and all related emails, notes, tasks, and meetings. The main goal is to streamline the M&A processes and help people in the organization share and coordinate their activities.
Migration
In the IT world, migration means a process of moving a database from one software to another one. Typically used when customers switch between two systems and data needs to be moved from the old one to the other one.
It requires proper analysis, field mapping, and checking whether the migration was successful. Often, the implementation team migrates the data several times in order to make sure that everything is OK.
Mobile CRM
CRM software that runs inside your mobile phones or tablets. Very useful for those who spend most of their time in a field / on the go, like sales reps, on-site engineers, or managers.
Outlook CRM
CRM software integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Since Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular business email clients, companies often need to synchronize their emails with CRM software. Such a category of computer programs provides the ability.
Project Management
A process of planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve set goals at the specified time and conditions.
Every project begins with an analysis that identifies goals, risks, resources needed (people, capital, material goods), and time scope. The realization is usually based on a well-proven project management methodology (Waterfall, PRINCE2, SCRUM, XP, …)
Project management is often supported by professional software tools that are compliant with the chosen PM methodologies.
Sales Management
A process of selling company products/services in order to maximize revenue and profit. It is based on the company strategy and contains various sales techniques, training, and people management.
It is very often supported by a professional CRM tool, that allows tracking the individual business opportunities, their status, communication history, etc. Such CRM tools also provide a set of reports (the most popular is the sales pipeline) to keep the management up to date and help them predict future income.
Web CRM
CRM software that runs inside internet browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, …). It provides all the usual features and it’s very often presented the cloud-CRM. One of the biggest advantages is that it does not depend on the HW you use. It can be used on PC, Mac, and often also through tablets or mobile phones (the web app has to support so-called “responsivity”). On the other hand, it requires a stable and fast internet connection that is not always by hand (planes, hotels, airports, trains, etc). Also, the integration with Outlook is not the best.