ABSTRACT
Winners' approach to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is based on the principle of the perfect circle. This principle consists of five key elements, all five weighted with equal importance. If one places less emphasis on one element over another, the circle collapses. A CRM strategy can be created in just three steps: identify one's main goals, understand one's current situation, and roadmap the journey. The role of technology is to act as an enabler in the use of CRM. When one applies best-practice CRM he is given the opportunity to streamline the processes across his organisation's different departments, with workflows or automation that will increase efficiencies, effectiveness and speed up manual tasks. Perhaps the element that is most likely to hold up progress in the development of any CRM strategy is culture or, more importantly, cultural silos. Cultural silos are natural divides that occur within organisations and minimise collaboration.
