[Editor's Note:Know what makes your best customers happy, and keeps them coming back.] Christopher J. Bucholtz - Ecommerce Times - 3/5/10 There's an adage in the CRM industry that every successful CRM implementation is customized in some way. That may not be as much of an absolute as it once was, with SaaS allowing smaller businesses to handle the basics of sales and marketing with what's already in their CRM solutions. But, in order to gain a true competitive advantage from CRM, your business needs to find ways to use it differently than your competitors do.

While CRM is often seen as a remedial tool -- it cleans up disorganized data, it allows disparate people to communicate about sales and marketing, it gives you a better view of the customer when service issues arise -- it can and should be more than that. It should also amplify the positive traits that already exist within your company, and tap into ideas your staff has had that were never really possible before. Read the full story.