A CRM system, or Customer Relationship Management system, is a software system that helps businesses manage their interactions with customers. It compiles data from various communication channels, such as a companys website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials, and social media, to provide a comprehensive view of customer interactions. The primary goal of a CRM system is to integrate and automate sales, marketing, and customer support, providing a dashboard that gives an overall view of these functions on a single customer view.

A CRM system helps businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs, thus retaining customers and driving sales growth. It allows businesses to manage relationships with customers, helping the business to grow. By tracking every phone call, email sent, meeting held, and presentation delivered, CRM systems can also be used to add notes, schedule follow-ups, and organize the next steps that need to be taken.

Common components and capabilities of CRM systems include marketing automation, workflow automation, and lead management. Marketing automation capabilities automate repetitive tasks to enhance marketing efforts at different touchpoints in the lifecycle for lead generation. Workflow automation helps companies optimize business processes by streamlining mundane workloads, enabling employees to focus on high-level and creative tasks that help them close deals. Sales leads can be tracked through a CRM platform, enabling sales teams to input, track, and analyze data for leads in one place.

In summary, a CRM system is a tool that helps businesses manage customer relationships by storing customer and prospect data, tracking customer interactions, and sharing this information with colleagues. It allows businesses to streamline processes, improve profitability, and grow their business by providing a central place where businesses can store customer and prospect data[[5]](https://www.hubspot.com/prod...