Many companies are trying to improve (or keep from further losing) market share by using these techniques. A couple years ago I was at a small company in NC that was automating their sales force. Last year I was a marketing assistant for a supposedly large management consulting company (their annual revenue was stated as over 100M USD but being privately held no one knows but the IRS.) They did not have a clue as to what CRM was;as an example, a company might get calls from 3 different people from the consulting firm within a week. This is one example of what CRM must do: track sales calls.
All of the major Enterprise Software companies (SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle, etc.) have CRM modules. Other leading offerings include Goldmine, generally for large corporations, and ACT!, lacking some of Goldmine's functionality but suitable for SMB's (small-to-medium-sized businesses.)
There is a lot of information on the Web and elsewhere if you want to study the subject further.
Please feel free to email any questions or comments.
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