Sidebar: CRM: It All Begins With Data

By Ira Breskin

December 15, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - A CRM system succeeds or fails based on whether it's readily supplied with high-quality data. At Baxa Corp., an Englewood, Colo.-based maker of machines used in hospital pharmacies, a CRM project stalled because of data integration issues. "Our key problem was recognizing the fact that data about our customers were in many different databases," says Marian Robinson, Baxa's vice president of marketing.
Now the company hopes to jump-start the CRM project by using middleware that links disparate data sources together, thus laying the right groundwork for a CRM analytics system it plans to purchase in the near future.
Robinson says the key goal for Baxa will be to use CRM to bolster sales or generate more profitable sales, not to simply automate or organize sales data and marketing efforts. The latter tasks can be handled by cheaper sales force automation software.

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