Simply Conceptualising CRM

The priviliege and curse of joining Salesforce as a fresh faced grad is joining Salesforce whilst having no clue what a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is and why it would be needed.

I’ll be providing an analogy explaining what salesforce is. This is how I conceptualise salesforce. It’s easier than wracking your head for a dictionary definition of a CRM.

Hub and Spoke

Think of salesforce as a hub and spoke. The products are the spokes, the customer is the Hub. When you use a phone, say an iPhone for instance you put all your data in iCloud. This data exists in a pool that can be retrieved across any device. So when you go on your Mac, or on your iPad, or even on your Apple Watch there is a consistency across your experience.

Consistency for Businesses

Think of salesforce as that same experience but for businesses. When businesses receive data from the customer, the customer data exists in the Hub. The data in that Hub can then be retrieved, changed or reported on all within one platform. (There are other capabilities but let’s keep it super simple)

So when boiled down it’s a cloud based way of storing data about your customer (Hub) using business tools (Spokes). Simple as.

If you aren’t an apple product power user this analogy potentially falls very flat. In that case enjoy this beautiful picture of a wheel that explains the same concept. You can’t have STABLE a wheel (businesses + customer) that moves (transacts) and supports (customers) without a solid centre. It will collapse under the weight of whatever it’s supporting.

So in summary a fragile businesses is one that doesn’t put the customer at the centre… I tried. Bad jokes aside, this is how I conceptualise a CRM the size of salesforce. For the layperson without layering on tons of business jargon hopefully it gets the point across.