People expect more than they used to. In today's information age, they want to know what you have in stock, what price they paid last time, what you had for dinner last night....No wait, maybe not everything, but certainly they want to know that you know their business. Customers expect more and want to pay less.

The challenge when small businesses grow is that many times, departments struggle to communicate. The sales department is busy with new orders, the warehouse is trying to keep up with the shipping demands of those new orders and customer services is digging through UPS logs to see if and when the customer on the phone's order shipped. Email encourages immediate action and processes and workflow often fly out the window when employees are pressured to get so much done in so little time.

Enter Integrated CRM! Customer Relationship Management integrated with your ERP or business management systems create a single repository for all customer and even vendor information. The power of the mouse click lets you look up the latest shipments to your best customer, find out how many quotes transformed into orders in July and can even show the tracking number of the last order out the door with a few taps of the keyboard. It doesn't matter what business you are in, if you have customers, you need to have CRM.

Check out this article on The Importance of Integrated CRM. It's worth the read!