"CRM is an ongoing business process to focus on gaining, growing and nurturing the right customers for your business...most real estate companies unfortunately assume slick brochures and a fancy web site is enough"

Also unfortunately for some IT companies CRM software is just a software product they sell to make a profit and install to any company let alone a real estate based organisation and they don't really care if they fit a square peg into a round hole. So where does CRM fit into a real estate environment and how can it be implemented successfully?

Ascendant know that CRM is a part of a complex and dynamic real estate software systems environment. Put simply real estate companies and property organisations are faced with the option of implementing trust accounting type software which tries hard to cover all aspects of a real estate business or selecting best of breed software including the best CRM solution possible.

CRM for real estate is a reflection of a business strategy to focus on the client. But to do so a business must take into account so other systems such as listing management and web sites, visibility in search engines, email systems, trust accounting software, property management systems, property databases and mapping programs, and more - Whew !

What are a real estate firms choices for CRM software ?

	Trust Accounting Systems with some Contact Management functions
	Proprietary ( made in access or filemaker pro etc ) Listing Based Systems with some Contact Management functions
	MS Outlook which has some Contact Management functions
	True CRM such as ACT! ( LAN and Web), Sales Logix ( LAN and Web ) which are not real estate specific unless modified
	Build it yourself - normally expensive and time consuming

	central database across offices or separate
	web based or LAN based or a mix
	listing web site integration
	html email and letter merge facilities
	data security and access for individual agents
	trust accounting integration
	data migration from existing systems
	real estate campaign management tracking
	automated process engineering
	training and customising

Does your CRM partner understand where all these systems fit in and how best to accommodate them ??