The trouble is that this information is usually scattered widely across the organisation. It is
buried deep in the separate databases, plans and records of many different company functions
and departments. To overcome such problems, many companies use customer relationship
management (CRM) to manage detailed information about individual customers and
carefully manage customer ‘touchpoints’. In recent years, there has been an explosion in the
number of companies using CRM. One research firm found that 97 per cent of businesses
plan to boost spending on CRM technology within the next two years.26