"Wherever you walk, everybody sees the same displays and promotions. It is fundamentally flawed because customers have different buying habits, characteristics and values. When you move into the internet economy you need a fundamentally different way of operating where you personalise what each person sees.”

This ability to personalise is a fundamental feature of customer relationship management (CRM), which Gartner Group, the independent analyst, defines as "a business strategy designed to optimise profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction".

The SmartCMS CRM module puts the customer at the centre of your thinking and integrates all processes around a single view of the customer. This allows you to build a close relationship with each customer as an individual, learning about them and communicating messages and offers that are unique to them.

Closely linked to personalisation is the ability to use business rules to respond to specific events relating to the customer, actual or anticipated, by triggering messages and promotions that are relevant to the event. Examples include wedding anniversaries, birthdays, or a customer missing a regular order.

SmartCMS also enables cross and up-selling to be driven by either the customer profile or the product they are purchasing.

Clearly, CRM is not a technology, but a strategic business issue that requires the technology support that is found within Visuality's SmartCMS.

• Product related cross selling.
• Customer profile related up selling.