Business challenges continue to intensify and pressures on departments to work together and perform at maximum efficiency have made the need for effective Customer Relationship Management solutions even more profound.  

Hurdles for CEOs, Sales, Customer Service, Marketing and IT departments continue to take form: 

• Customers have greater expectations and as such, all departments have to develop new value-add messages that will resonate with their clients
• Product life cycles are negligible, requiring Marketing and Sales teams to have real time information to keep up with the ongoing changes to their product features, complexities and limitations
• Competition is fierce, forcing Marketing, Sales and Support people to find important differentiators that will make their products stand out in the marketplace
• Support for Sales continues to decline due to financial constraints, placing much of the administrative burden and sales process back on the rep
• Technology is advancing rapidly and IT executives need to reduce the time and cost to do initial installs and updates and ensure everyone is at the same level
• Management, Sales, Marketing and Support each require reports specific to their needs and IT must reduce the number of customized reports it delivers

While many of these challenges aren’t necessarily new, the manner in which they are being addressed has new focus.  

Spinnaker holds firm the notion that CRM is enabled through a complete solution that can accurately and empirically predict performance.  One requisite is the sharing of business knowledge to, from and within different departments.   

The two most common delivery methods for this knowledge have been either people-based or technology-based.  The emergence of business knowledge in a blend of high-tech and low-tech methodologies means that businesses can more accurately and aggressively meet their customer needs.