CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management” and includes the processes used by organizations of all sizes for retaining existing customers and acquiring new ones.

What is CRM software?

When people use the term CRM, they are often speaking about a CRM system. This is a software platform that organizes a company’s relationships with customers, prospective customers, vendors and more. Learn more about CRMs in this blog post.

Who should be using a CRM?

Any business that handles sales or marketing of products or services can benefit from using a CRM. This includes both B2B and B2C businesses. The teams most likely to use a CRM in any business are Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. Sales - A CRM helps your sales team be well positioned to upsell and cross-sell your products and services. Sales teams can also use click-to-call functions to help save time and make it easy to keep track of all your interactions with prospects and customers so nothing falls into the cracks. They can also generate highly specific quotes as they seek new business and to run reports and invoices for existing customers. Marketing - A CRM helps your marketing team gather valuable information from your customers, making it easier to target marketing efforts precisely and effectively. When you can aim your marketing campaigns at a specific audience, you’re far more likely to reap a good ROI, and you don’t waste the time and money that often results from an undifferentiated marketing campaign, which can end up feeling like spam. Customer service - CRMs help support teams efficiently resolve issues, and make it easy to connect customers to the right person at all times.

When should a business start using a CRM?

Most companies wait too long to implement a CRM, often falling into chaos and making both customers and employees irritable. By the time you’ve hired employee number 10, you’re likely to need a CRM. At this point, communication starts to get more difficult, and the lack of a CRM is probably resulting in a lot of wasted time and effort. A good test is if you feel that you’ve outgrown your spreadsheets, it’s time for a CRM. If you aren’t able to identify where new customers have come from (and whether they’re responding to your marketing campaigns or not), it’s time for a CRM. If you don’t know what your salespeople are doing, it’s time for a CRM.

What is the difference between an on-premise CRM and a cloud CRM?

The big difference between on-premise and cloud is where the software and data are stored. With on-premise CRM, the software is located on your company’s servers and on employee computers. The implementation process typically takes more time, more IT resources, and is more complex. However if your organization has especially strict security protocols, this can be the ideal choice. With an on-premise implementation, upgrades will take longer, and your IT team will be taxed to provide service to the CRM. You’ll typically be charged per implementation. Cloud-based or software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRMs are operated on and store data on the vendor’s servers. The vendor is responsible for the uptime operation of the system and provides customer support. You’ll need a strong internet connection to run a cloud-based CRM, but you won’t need the expense of dedicated servers. Upgrades will occur at all times, so the platform will be constantly evolving. You’ll typically be charged by seat.

The Contact Management CRM your team will love

Choose a Contact Management CRM solution your team will love. It’s is powerful, affordable, and scalable.

Why choose Insightly Contact Management CRM?

Affordable yet powerful

Get modern, robust features in a cloud platform, but skip the enterprise prices.

Scalable

The CRM that’s built to scale. It will grow with you…but you’ll never outgrow it.

The CRM you’ll love

Easy to adopt and use across your entire organization every day.

Build and Convert Sales Pipeline

Convert quality leads to opportunities, actively manage every step from opportunity to close, and grow your business faster than ever.

Adopting Insightly has helped us close deals faster because the entire team collaborates on providing mission-critical detail in the CRM. From my perspective as a sales leader, the support I get from the team to capture this information and close opportunities is absolutely critical to our success.

Ian Pund, Senior Vice President of Sales,
Noble BioMaterials

Sales Pipeline & Lead Management

Start acting on leads and create opportunities

Capture relevant details about each lead
Prioritize leads with your teams, and distribute based on criteria you set
Empower teams to get a real-time view into where each deal stands

Sales Lead Tracking & Opportunity Management

Create velocity through your sales process

Leverage your pipelines to track, manage, and nurture deals efficiently
Get insights into what’s moving your business forward, and where the risks are
Manage opportunities in customizable pipelines
Drive more velocity through the sales and delivery process

Increase Productivity

By supporting intuitive, automated, and scalable processes, teams are empowered to close deals and deliver services faster and more efficiently.

“By leveraging Insightly, we were able to shave 50% off our timelines. Insightly allows us to seamlessly push data to each project directly, which empowers us to move onto the next step in our process instantly.”

Joanna Falcone,
VP Systems and Process Development

Business Workflow & Process Automation

Automate repetitive, manual tasks so your team can focus on what matters most.

Eliminate the risk of human error
Reduce the number of redundant tasks and processes
Scale faster with email, reminders, onboarding stages and much more
Free your team from low-value tasks and improve employee engagement

Validation Rules & Advanced Permissions

Preserve data integrity, capture quality data, and deliver great experiences.

Make your CRM even more valuable to your business by ensuring that every business-critical field and object is updated with validation rules
Ensure accuracy and data compliance
Help teams perform efficiently and stay on track by delivering data access to the right roles and profiles with advanced permissions
Take control of your data by making sure the right people have the right access at all times

Products, Price Books & Quotes

Create a complete record of your offerings and make it easy to close the deal.

Drive process improvement and clarity by helping your teams add the right products to the right opportunities at the right price
Create deal velocity, configure and price quotes directly from opportunity records and keep track of the status with quote pipelines
Quickly and seamlessly generate PDFs or email quotes directly from Insightly
Customize your quotes with branded templates

Project & Task Management

Create seamless post-sale transitions, ensure crisp communication, manage projects, and complete them faster.

Seamlessly convert opportunities to projects after the deal is closed
Copy all corresponding details, records, tasks and more from the opportunity directly in the project for complete visibility into customer requirements
Use pipelines and milestones to enhance cross-team communication
Tailor every project with custom fields and page layouts to deliver great outcomes to your customers

Build Lasting Customer Relationships

Show customers and prospects you know them by capturing the right information about every interaction and using your data to deliver great experiences.

Our motto is this: If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen. If you have an idea, explore it. Get the process on a white board and work with your Insightly team to see if it’s possible. Odds are, the answer is yes.

Jennifer Nietz,
Vice President, COACT

Customer Relationship Management

Relationships are everything. Improve every connection you make and grow your business by delivering efficiently on your promises.

Create a single source of truth for every customer relationship
Break down communication silos by capturing the right information about every deal and making it accessible to key stakeholders in every department
Improve your business processes, elevate the experiences you deliver, and grow your business faster than ever

Customizable CRM

Every business is unique. Configure the CRM and information to match your business processes.

Intuitive customization empowers you to easily mold Insightly to your unique business needs
Save on cost with intuitive, easy customization – no expensive third party developers required
Improve communication, collaboration, and CRM adoption while driving great business outcomes

Customer Email Management

Make all your communication even more effective with Insightly.

Deliver complete visibility to all your teams across every single customer email interaction
Drive deal and project velocity by tracking and managing each customer communication in Insightly
Facilitate proactive communication by picking up the relationship at exactly the right place

Get real-time performance insights

Create real-time, customizable data visualizations in minutes with the data that matters most to your business.

Because operations and sales all utilize Insightly, we’re all empowered to deliver great customer experiences. Insightly delivers a great way for us in operations to understand and get ahead of what’s coming.

Amber Livingston,
Operations Manager, Multifamily Utility Company

Performance Dashboards & Reporting

Create customizable charts and visualizations in minutes with the data that matters most.

Customize around your unique KPIs so that your key metrics are visible at a glance
Make decisions based on what’s happening with your business in real time
Get to a single source of truth for your business, save time on handoffs across teams, and create consistency
Create up to 100 shareable dashboard cards on the Professional Plan and an unlimited number of cards on the Enterprise plan

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Do more, better, faster

Increase your teams’ productivity by automating and orchestrating workflow tasks, sending emails, updating records, executing custom code, firing webhooks, and much more.

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Customers drive productivity with Insightly CRM

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Solar company shows how Insightly helped them triple revenue without tripling the team.

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Experience Insightly CRM for yourself

Keep everything safe and secure

Our entire team uses the Insightly platform too, so we ensure your data is as secure and safe as our own. We work with customers every day to make sure that their data security requirements are met and exceeded.

SOC 2 Type II certified
Single-sign-on via industry standard authentication protocols
Two-factor authentication support
Encryption of data in transit and at rest
EU/US Privacy Shield and GDPR Compliance
HIPAA Compliance

Work from anywhere

Manage everything on the go with award winning mobile applications for both Android and iOS.

Scan business cards

Take the drudgery out of data entry by uploading all contact information from any business card in just one click.

Update your projects in real time

Road warriors can quickly update the other members of the delivery team on the status of their tasks, milestones, and deliverables.

Move opportunities along

Field salespeople can easily change the status and amount of an opportunity—or create a new one—right at the client’s location.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is contact management software?

Contact management software systems hold all of the contacts that your organization does business with, including people and companies. Your contact management software can be a simple application that is a list of entities, or it can be more feature rich in the form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

Is contact management software the same as CRM?

Contact management is a feature of a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. CRM software will also allow for workflow automations, pipeline and lead tracking, email sends, and dashboards and reporting.

Why do businesses use contact management software?

A contact management software helps organize your business by putting contact information for key clients and companies at your fingertips.

What information do businesses store in their contact management software?

Contact management software is like a digital rolodex holding the information typically stored on a business card. This includes name, title, email address, phone numbers and perhaps additional notes.

Contact Management CRM

In today’s business environment, contact management CRM is essential for businesses to succeed in their sales and marketing strategies. But what is contact management in CRM?

Before diving into what contact management in CRM is, let’s review a few key terms.

What is Contact Management?

Contact management is a way to oversee and organize your contacts and leads, and it can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or as complex as a software program. The objective of a contact management system is to create and maintain a digital record of customer data so you have easy and quick access to it.

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

CRM stands for customer relationship management, a process that helps businesses keep track of all interactions with customers and leads. Typically, a contact is an existing customer who has purchased from you, whereas a lead is a potential customer.

The concept of contact management in CRM isn’t difficult to understand. In short, a [contact management CRM system|https://www.insightly.com/crm/] allows you to utilize customer data to enhance engagement and cultivate relationships.

Some ways to use contact management CRM include:

Converting – Build your sales pipeline to convert quality leads into opportunities
Streamlining – Streamline workflows by automating repetitive, manual tasks
Validating – Use validation rules and advanced permissions to preserve data integrity, capture quality data, and deliver excellent experiences.
Recordkeeping – Create a complete record of your offers, making it easy to close the deal.

Should I choose CMS or CRM?

If you’re still trying to understand what contact management is, know that it’s much more than merely placing contacts into a simple contact database. Contact management encompasses various solutions, including basic contact management systems (CMS) (or customer database management systems) and robust customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Contact management software (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) are two very different technologies. However, the two work together to accomplish the same end goal — generating leads and closing sales.

CMS Versus CRM

Choosing between [CMS and CRM|https://www.insightly.com/blog/crm-vs-cms/] can be challenging when determining which one suits your business needs better. Although many software vendors use “CMS” and “CRM” interchangeably, there’s a vast difference in their level of functionality.

Contact management features vary widely but generally include the following:

Contact database
Customizable fields
Activity tracking
Search functionality
Phone and email integrations
Task lists
Mobile access using a phone or tablet

In contrast, the most common customer relationship management features may include:

Contact management capabilities
Lead scoring and opportunity management
Workflows and approvals
Campaign automation
Email, phone, chat, and call center integration
Sales reporting and analytics dashboards
File storage, syncing, and sharing
Role-based permissions and security

Contact Management

Contact management is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. Many systems are easy to use, cloud-based, and can integrate with other business applications.

Contact management examples include setting up your email to automatically add new contacts or integrating e-commerce to view customer data. Your database is carefully planned to have all the customer information you want to keep track of.

Contact database examples include tables with custom fields for each customer’s name, contact information, company, etc., which can be linked to specific relationship statuses, such as “potential client.”

You may be surprised to learn that contact management can be used for various purposes other than business. Many people use personal CRM for friends, family, and even potential significant others.

Contact Management Tools

Managing your contact and leads has never been easier using a contact management tool. The one best suited to your business depends on your needs. It’s also important to note that you’ll need to pay close attention to the pros and cons of each, as even the most popular tools may not be the best option.

There are several [types of contact management tools”

Operational CRMs (e.g., Spotio) – This type of CRM leverages automation for business processes that involve customer service or marketing. Customer data is collected from websites, social media, emails, and other sources and analyzed to help qualify leads.

Analytical CRMs (e.g., OLAP) – This CRM analyzes customer data with algorithms and machine learning to provide insight into customers’ needs.

Collaborative CRMs (e.g., Dynamics 365 Sales) – This CRM primarily tracks and shares data on customer interactions with your company via the web, social media, emails, etc.

Strategic CRMs (e.g., most generic CRMs) – This CRM uses algorithmic and analytical features to learn about customers and build long-term relationships.

Legacy CRMs (e.g., Salesforce) – This type of CRM is an old version that sales leaders typically use. Legacy CRMs tend to be complex and expensive, making them difficult to set up and integrate with other applications. However, many legacy CRMs remain popular.

Niche CRMs (e.g., HubSpot) – This CRM focuses on specific aspects of a business, such as marketing or marketing automation. Niche CRMs can be challenging to integrate into complex environments, and they often lack the flexibility and ability to grow with the company.

The contact management definition HubSpot supplies on its website is as follows: “Contact management is the process of recording contact data for individuals and businesses in your organization’s network — including suppliers, customers, leads, partners, subscribers, and more — and managing your interactions with them.” HubSpot is a well-known, popular CRM geared more toward small businesses. It’s easier to use than Salesforce, which is more suited for sales and customer service. While HubSpot draws you in with its free sales and marketing platform, you must pay a high price to benefit from its CRM features. HubSpot works best when you use all of its platforms. If you outgrow its website software or social media features, you’ll be faced with integration woes. Insightly is designed to integrate easily which is why it is the CRM of choice for growing businesses.

So what’s the best content management software to buy for your company?

Best Contact Management Software

By now, you surely understand the importance of contact management. However, you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the many options available on the market.

Best Personal Contact Management Software

CRM is most often used in business, but you can also use it to help you maintain a healthy work-life balance. The best personal relationship management app or software allows you to manage many of the following in one location:

Contacts – Manage your private communications, such as friends and family
Calendar – Keep a calendar for important dates like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
Alerts – Get reminders for activities such as doctor appointments, interviews, fitness, etc.
Lists – Create to-do lists, manage tasks, and take notes to organize your day

Some people also use contact management software to help them find their “soulmate” — yes, you heard right! Contact management can be used to keep track of the dates you go on. There are several personal CRM open source options, such as Monica, a personal CRM on GitHub that can be used for managing romantic relationships.

If you’re looking for advice on anything, from the best open source contact management software to the best personal CRM, Reddit users sometimes offer valuable suggestions. Many have mentioned Odoo and AirTable, to name a few.

Remember: most contact management software will have too many, too few, or the wrong features.

Best Business Contact Management Software

Finding the right CRM can seem like an impossible feat. The best contact management software (e.g., Insightly) should offer the following features and benefits:

Sales pipeline that converts quality leads
Streamlined workflows with automated tasks
Validation rules for data integrity and quality
Complete records of all offers for ease in closing deals
Seamless post-sale transitions and communication
Improved customer connections to deliver efficiently on your promises
CRM configurations that match your business processes
Performance dashboards with real-time, customizable charts and visualizations
Safe and secure customer data

Business contact management software works in a similar way as personal versions. In fact, you might find some business contact software suitable for personal use. Many individuals use the software to handle both their personal and business contacts.

The main difference in business contact management compared to personal is that it’s much more complex and offers many more features. You won’t need most of these features for personal contact, but they can be powerful in leveling up your sales game.

Final Thoughts on Contact Management

Whether personal or business, it’s clear how valuable a contact management system can be. Your options are endless, but take care to choose contact management software that’s most suited to your current and future needs. Not every contact management CRM is created equal, so be sure you get the features you need based on your goals. Use contact management to keep track of your connections and boost revenue, maintain a healthy work-life balance, or find the love of your life.

Don’t settle for a contact management system that doesn’t serve your needs. Some offer too many or too few features, but you still pay, even if they’re useless. Insightly stands out among the rest because it offers [affordable pricing plan options|https://www.insightly.com/pricing-plans/?plan=crm] for a CRM platform as well as an All-in-One platform. It all depends on your business needs — you never pay for what you can’t use.

If you’re looking to implement or move to a new, improved platform, then there’s no better time than now. Witness firsthand how the top contact management software can benefit your business.

Try Insightly today by signing up for a self-serve free trial (no credit card needed) or a personalized demo (no commitment required).