What is CIM? How is it different from CRM?

Customers frequently provide information about their interests and demographics when they interact with a brand, whether directly with company employees or indirectly through social media posts, websites, or advertisements. 

 

This data can help business leaders create more effective sales, service, and marketing campaigns, but first, they may need to organize and manage the data. Learning about customer information management can help you understand how businesses collect and sort information about their customers for business intelligence purposes.

 

What is CIM?

 

Customer information management (CIM) is the practice of managing customer data in an enterprise. It is a broad term that refers to the broader category of master data management. IT professionals in CIM deal with all of the customer identifiers and data points that exist within a given business architecture.

 

One way to describe customer information management (CIM) is to contrast it with similar terms. For example, customer relationship management refers to systems and tools that assist businesses in better communicating with customers or analyzing ongoing or potential deals. 

 

On the other hand, CIM is the process of gathering isolated data about customers and managing it as a whole or deploying it to places where it can do more good.

 

Typically, customer information management is done across an architecture. Cross-indexing accounts, for example, to provide more easily accessible customer identifiers or names, or account histories would be considered CIM. 

 

Workers may be required to analyze more structured or less structured data when performing CIM tasks, such as collecting stray bits of information from Internet forums or mining customer names and numbers from letters or other print communications.

 

The ultimate goal of CIM is to organize all of a company's information about customers in any part of its software architecture, breaking down data silos so that the company has the best intelligence and benefits the most from its data assets.

 

 

What is CRM?

 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology that allows you to manage all of your company's relationships and interactions with current and prospective customers. The goal is straightforward: to strengthen business relationships.

 

A CRM system assists businesses in staying connected to customers, streamlining processes, and increasing profitability. When people talk about Customer Relationship Management, they usually mean a CRM system, which is a tool that aids in contact management, sales management, productivity, and other areas.

 

A CRM solution allows you to focus on your organization's relationships with individual people — such as customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers — throughout the lifecycle of the relationship, including finding new customers, winning their business, and providing support and additional services.

 

Also Read | Introduction to Enterprise Content Management

 

 

How does CIM Work?

 

Companies gather information about their customers from a variety of sources, including social media, email marketing, and feedback surveys. Customer information management systems collect all of this data and compile it for business intelligence.
 

Identifying trends in how customers interact with a company's brand or employees can assist company leaders in developing growth strategies that meet the needs of their desired customer base.

 

For example, a tutoring business might use an online analytics program to track marketing data such as email click-through rates and social media post views. The company may also use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to track purchases, refund requests, and interactions between customers and sales staff. 

 

Finally, the software team at the company may monitor user behavior on the company's online practice portal. The company's leadership team can see information about all of these interactions in one place by using a customer information management system.

 

How does CRM software Work?

 

Below are some of the ways of how CRM software works :

 

1. It increases the efficiency of your Sales Workflow

 

Workflow management is at the heart of every CRM software. Its functions are divided into two major categories: pre-sales and post-sales. All transactions begin with a lead from anyone who can be considered a potential customer. 

 

After you submit a lead, the CRM software will route it through the sales process, associating the lead with relevant records on calls, reminders, documents, and messages.

 

2. It notifies you of Important Sales Tasks
    

Based on your settings, the CRM software will remind you when something needs to be done. You can also program it to perform predefined tasks such as sending emails and initiating phone calls. Everything you do with the software is recorded, giving you enough time to make better action plans to close any potential sale.

 

3. It Creates Possibilities

 

You can use the CRM to post-sales after you've closed a deal. For example, the software can track issues that the customer has reported in an integrated help desk or notify you of a question that indicates the need for upselling or cross-sell. In this case, the customer can be returned to the lead pipeline for additional potential revenue.

 

4. It is compatible with your other critical Business Systems

 

CRM software, in its most basic form, is a sales pipeline that accepts and organizes customer data and transactions, sometimes in collaboration with other applications such as e-commerce platforms, help desks, and marketing automation systems.

 

5. It aids in the improvement of sales, marketing, and customer service outcomes

 

CRM, when used correctly, produces powerful results for any business. It boosts marketing, sales, and customer service outcomes. CRM software, in particular, assists you in developing a sales and marketing strategy.

 

 

Benefits of Customer Information Management

 

Despite CIM's numerous benefits and efficiencies, many organizations fail to take advantage of it. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of CIM (Customer Information Management) :

 

1. Strategic Planning

 

A customer information management system is frequently used by business leaders because it allows them to collect a large amount of customer data in a single location. In some businesses, the sales, marketing, business development, and customer service departments all use different platforms to record and analyze customer interactions.

 

When analyzing trends, company leaders, such as CEOs and owners, often find it useful to see data trends from across the company. These systems also enable company leaders to easily access historical data, which can aid in forecasting future trends in customer behavior.

 

A customer information management system, for example, could be used by the leadership team of an insurance company to organize information about customer web activity over the last decade.

 

2. Increased Security

 

Maintaining data security helps businesses avoid lawsuits and protects their systems from intruders. Reduced duplicate customer information in a company's database is one way a customer information system can improve data security.

 

Customer data management is a component of CIM that focuses on data verification and ensuring that customers have a single account with accurate information. Customer information management systems also standardized information gathering and storage processes, thereby protecting sensitive data from leaks and breaches.

 

An accounting firm, for example, may have a customer information management system that ensures customer service representatives and account managers use specific security measures when communicating with clients.

 

3. Improved Customer Experience

 

A company's leadership team can make adjustments to the company's website and sales process to make the customer's purchasing process easier by collecting feedback and information about customer behavior.

 

For example, a website analytics report from an online retailer might show that many customers leave the site during the purchase process. Based on this information, the marketing team may include a survey asking users about their site experience.

 

If the majority of respondents say there are too many steps between the main page and the sales page, the company's sales director might collaborate with web developers to add sales page shortcuts throughout the website.

 

Also Read |  Guide to Marketing Management

 

Benefits of CRM Software

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Benefits of using CRM

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Below are some benefits of using CRM software :

 

1. Sales have increased

 

A CRM tool can assist you in streamlining your sales process, creating a sales pipeline, automating key tasks, and analyzing all of your sales data in one place, potentially increasing sales and productivity.

 

Another thing CRM software excels at is creating a centralized database with all of your customers' information, making it easily accessible to anyone in your company who requires it.

 

2. Communication with prospective leads was managed

 

Lead nurturing can be a time-consuming and complicated process with numerous steps and opportunities for communication.

 

3. Improved Customer Service

 

Modern CRM software has many functions, but it was designed to improve business-customer relationships, and this remains its primary benefit.

 

4. Customer Segmentation has been Improved

 

A contact list of hundreds of names and numbers can be cumbersome and overwhelming. A CRM will automatically segment your contact lists based on your preferences, making it simple to find the people you want to contact at any given time.

 

5. Sales reports are generated automatically

 

Using the CRM software's dashboard and reporting features, your team can easily collect and organize data about prospective and current customers, allowing employees to automate and manage their pipelines and processes.

 

6. More precise Sales Forecasting

 

With any business operation, you must be able to evaluate past performance and plan strategically for the future. You can identify key trends and get an idea of what to expect from your future sales cycle performance by using automated sales reports in CRM software while adjusting your goals and metrics to match those projections.

 

7. Internal communications have been simplified

 

A CRM can help your employees communicate with one another in addition to facilitating communication between your company and its customers. A CRM allows you to see how other employees interact with a potential customer, which aids your team in maintaining a consistent brand voice.

 

Also Read | Customer Journey Analytics

 

 

Why is Customer Information Management Important?

 

Below are some of the reasons that contribute towards importance of CIM :

 

1. Without document management, it is difficult to access much of the most important client information. CRM software manages structured data such as company names and addresses, order numbers, and customer service issues and their resolution. 

 

2. Client data can only reveal so much. When it is combined with information from relevant documents such as proposals, contracts, communications, and emails, which provide context for the data, it produces real insight.

 

3. Customers can contact your company through a variety of channels and expect the same level of service whether they use email, a web form, a chatbot, or a mobile device. Customers are irritated by delays caused by information being spread across multiple platforms. 

 

Consider the last time you called a company and were transferred from department to department before your issue was resolved. They may be concerned about security if their information isn't found right away.

 

The speed with which sales and customer service employees respond to consumer inquiries is an important aspect of the customer experience. 

 

When you don't have a complete history of customer data and documents in a centralized database, the quality of your service suffers. Your employees' responses will be slower, and their client responses will most likely be incomplete. 

 

With document management, follow-up is significantly faster and more efficient because all authorized team members have access to the information they require. When your CRM and document management systems are integrated, you eliminate the need for duplicate data entry. 

 

4. Data can only be entered once and then shared. The costs of mishandling client data are rapidly increasing. It's not unusual to hear about data breaches and privacy violations. Dealing with these new, frequently competing standards is a losing proposition without document management.

 

Also Read | Top Customer Experience Trends

 

CRM includes CIM (customer interaction management) (Customer relationship management). The customer interaction center (CIC) is a component of the SAP CRM solution in SAP, an ERP solution.

 

CIM, in general, is concerned with the recording of customer communications. This software records cross-channel communication (service, sales, marketing, etc.), and the data is then available for reporting and analysis. 

 

The mission of CIM is to improve customer service. It also aids in the identification of prospective customers and the capture of sales orders. 

 

CRM includes CIM (customer interaction management) (Customer relationship management). CRM is a more general term. It is concerned with a company's strategic, long-term engagement with its key customers in order to obtain feedback on its products and services and to gain insight into their purchasing habits.