The CRM Handbook: A Business Guide to Customer Relationship Management

As the thinkers have said, you should strive in all situations to know yourself and know your enemy. Most of history's great thinkers, however, were not in business. In business, you have to know your customer and understand how your company interacts with him or her. The current term for this is customer relationship management (CRM), and The CRM Handbook is the best textbook for managers on the mechanics of CRM. It's a standout in a field that's filled with squishy books that go on at length about how important CRM is, but which lack details. Jill Dyche provides lots of factual information, real case studies, carefully considered commentary, and reasoned criteria with which to evaluate CRM products and strategies. Though you'll certainly want to supplement Dyche's work with vendors' product literature and implementation proposals, you'll get a lot from her carefully researched book.

Dyche devotes some of her (fairly slender) volume to CRM background information but quickly gets to the issues that managers confronted with CRM decisions need to consider. She makes great use of bulleted lists, scorable quizzes, and checklists (sections about what questions to ask vendors, and why, are particularly good) that you can use right now to gauge any organization's suitability to CRM and determine how they need to change in order to get the most out of their systems. --David Wall

Topics covered: Customer relationship management (CRM)--as a business practice and as a set of technologies--explained for managers and corporate planners. CRM fundamentals, CRM product selection, and internal promotion of CRM are all covered well.