CRM on KM

Customer Relationship Magazine has an article in their November 2004 issue on "Knowledge management plays a key role in CRM success" by Jason Compton (online when the December issue comes out).

In my mind, this is a no-brainer, but the focus of CRM and KM has frequently been miles apart. Where they are coming together, suggests the article, is in acknowledging that success will only come when any application is deeply tied to the underlying business processes that the application supports. The article talks about how the "knowledge base" and the CRM tools need to be integrated technically as well as integrated at the business process level.

The next steps for an article of this sort would be to discuss how other aspects of knowledge management can be integrated with CRM: expertise location, collaborative knowledge development (beyond knowledge sharing), communities and other aspects that can significantly enhance - or even alter - the CRM function.