Today, the customer must be the centre of our business. They are the ones who make the decisions about the purchases they make, which can mean that our company grows or not.

Relationship and digital marketing strategies are key to making our business thrive. In this sense, CRM will be a great ally for our strategy, as it allows the company to consider all the information generated by our customers or potential customers in order to adapt the commercial strategy to this information.

The first section of the report will analyse what CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is, which can be considered as a business philosophy and also a tool that supports this customer relationship philosophy.

There may be different understandings of CRM as a technology, as a strategy and as a process, the differences of which are explained in this section.

In addition, the functions and advantages of the model are detailed. How can a CRM application and installation help your SME to grow and prosper? By segmenting the customer database, creating customer records, managing business opportunities, etc. All these aspects will greatly improve the customer experience with the company, but additionally it will also improve the experience of your employees by improving their productivity and efficiency.

The second section of the document explains the different types of CRM, in order to understand their scope of action and their characteristics. In this sense, there are three types:

• Operational CRM: suitable for use in commercial management, marketing, and sales.

• Collaborative CRM: focused on establishing a solid link through the offer of products and services that meet the needs of your customers, taking advantage of all the channels offered by a CRM such as e-mail, chat or mobile phone.

• Advanced analytical CRM: for more advanced companies, allowing the exploitation and analysis of data collected about customers and stored in databases.

Knowing the different types of CRM and their characteristics, the third section analyses different types of providers, both free and paid, so that your SME can access this type of system and decide whether to invest in it or do it at no cost.

Before installing a CRM, an analysis should be made of the functionalities that each SME needs. In this sense, all types of CRM are very useful, although it is true that paid CRMs may have some additional functionality.

The last section of the report presents several use cases of SMEs and other companies that, after installing a CRM, began to see their business improve operationally and grow economically.