Microsoft Customer Relationship Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms are widely used as tools to help organizations streamline processes, develop customer relationships, increase sales, enhance customer service, and boost profitability. Customer acquisition and retention, which are at the core of a CRM’s function, depend on building strong relationships and tracking prospects and customers. However, selecting a suitable platform to accomplish the aforementioned goals is crucial, especially for medium-sized businesses (SMEs). There are great advantages to using CRM for any business, like enhanced contact management, cross-team collaboration, heightened productivity, empowered sales management, accurate sales forecasting, reliable reporting, improved sales metrics, increased customer satisfaction and retention, boosted marketing Return on Investment (ROI), and enriched products and services. This review compares the challenges and opportunities regarding using Microsoft CRM platform and a few other well-known CRM platforms, with an emphasis on SMEs.