Best SAT Prep Books 2019

Best SAT Prep Books 2019 SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips There are a lot of "Best SAT Books" lists out there, but we think that most of them aren’t very good or thorough. As a result, I’ve tried to write a much better guide here. In this article, you’ll learn which books are absolutely critical for your SAT prep, which books you can use to improve your individual section scores, and which books you'll need if you’re aiming for a top score. More importantly, you’ll learn how to use these SAT prep books for effective studying. This guide is pretty detailed, so here are reference links you can use to jump directly to different parts of the article. That said, I recommend reading the whole guide if you can! What's Better About This Guide to the Best SAT Books? Who Is This SAT Prep Books Guide For? Critical SAT Prep Books Best SAT Books by Subject Best Books for Top SAT Scorers Best All-in-One Book for Less Motivated Low Scorers The #1 SAT Prep Book to Avoid Buying Other Free Resources to Help You Plan Your SAT Prep Is Using SAT Prep Books the Best Option for You? What’s Better About This Guide to the Best SAT Books? Since your SAT score is important for yourcollege applications and you’ll likely spend a fair amount of time studying for the test, it’s important to get the right advice. Follow the wrong advice, and by the time you realize it's wrong, it'll probably be too late to improve your SAT score. Ideally, you'll vet any advice you get (including ours) before deciding on yourSAT prep plan. Before you read each article in your research, be sure to ask yourself, "Why should I trust this person online giving me SAT advice?" Well, we answer that question right here. Here’s why this SAT prep books guide is far better than others you might find online: I explain in detail why certain SAT books are good and what each book's flaws are. You probably haven’t heard of some of these prep books; many are newer or less well known and thus aren't featured as widely as books from more popular companies with larger marketing budgets. Most other SAT books guides just list a few books without context, but we tell you every critical piece of information you need to know before buying a book. I believe it’s important to target your weaknesses and where you need to prep.I’ll point out SAT books that are best for training for specific sections and books that are better for low or high scorers. Other guides assume that all students are the same, but we tailor ours to a variety of test-taker levels. I don’t get paid for promoting these SAT books over others.I don't know any of these authors personally. In reality, I’ve studied dozens of SAT prep books, and these are the ones I'd use if I myself were prepping. Other sites, such as about.com and reviews.com, get paid to adjust theirrankings or get kickbacks from publishers for mentioning their prep books. I like to think that I know what I’m talking about. I scored two perfect scores on the SAT and have worked directly with thousands of students prepping for the SAT. I’ve helped test takers of all levels, from those scoring around 800 to those aiming for 1530+. Other writers don't have the expertise needed to differentiate between good and bad SAT books, and end up recommending books as an afterthought. One important disclaimer: I’m co-founder of PrepScholar, an online SAT/ACT prep program. I believe we’ve built the best SAT prep program available. Itdiagnoses your strengths and weaknessesand gives you a structured all-in-one guide, combining the best aspects of the SAT books below so you can know exactly what to study at every point in your prep. I want to stress that you don’t need a prep program to do well on the SAT. In fact, writing this guide could lose us some customers if you decide you don’t need a program after all. If, however, you're not interested in managing 10 books and would rather have an integrated program that's customized to your learning style,check out our SAT prep program now. In either case, if you’re serious about SAT prep, keep reading. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Tired of wasting time prepping in ways that don't work? We have the industry's leading SAT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. It's the best prep program available right now. Best of all, we guarantee your money back if you don't improve your score by 160 points or more. Check out our 5-day free trial today: Improve Your SAT Score by 160+ Points, Guaranteed Who Is This SAT Prep Books Guide For? First, this guide is for students who are serious about test prep.You need to be motivated to get a high score, and you need to be willing to put in hard work. Getting through these books will take dozens of hours simply because the SAT covers so much material. If you plan to study just five hours or so, your choice of book won't make much difference.In this case, it's best to focus on taking anofficial SAT practice test and reviewing your answers. With such little prep time, your score won’t go up much in the end, so don't expect any miracles. Buying SAT prep books is the first and easiest step of SAT prep. You'll need to put in serious work to actually get the score improvements you want, though. In the following sections, we explain the best ways to get the most out of each SAT book we recommend. Secondly, this guide targets students who want to improve their scores by more than 100 points. To consistently score this much higher on the SAT, you'll need more than just tricks; you'll need to understand the actual contentbeing tested- that is, the underlying math concepts and grammar rules. Don't bother with ineffective "tricks" that simply make you feel as though you've learned something when you actually haven't. If you’re only looking to improve your score by 50 points or so, however, it’s possible for you to do this just byretaking the SAT, especially if you’ve taken the test only once. Lastly,to improve your score through SAT prep books, you'll need to have an excellent study strategy.It isn't enough to just read a book cover to cover- you must focus on your weaknesses by brushing up on the content you struggle with the most. Unfortunately, many students spend dozens of hours poring over one book after another without improving their SAT scores.Why? Because they're not understanding what their weaknesses areand aren'tfocusing their time on their weaknesses. Without learning how to attack your weak spots, you won't improve your SAT score! It might sound obvious, but it's pretty hard for many students to do this well. I write a lot more about how to prep for the SAT inmy guide to a perfect SAT score. It's also how I designed our online SAT program to do all of the hard structural work for you. Ultimately, if you’re serious about SAT score improvement and want to study with top prep books, this is the guide for you. The Best SAT Prep Books of 2019 For this guide, we’re going to divide our picks for the best SAT books into the following categories: Critical Books:These are must-have SAT books for your prep, no matter your strengths or weaknesses. Subject-Specific Books: These are by far the best books to use to better your SAT Reading, Math, and Writing skills. Books for Top Scorers:These SAT prep books are guaranteed to push you over the top and help you get the best score you're capable of achieving. Books for Low Scorers and Low Motivation: If you only want to study for a few hours and improve your SAT score just slightly, these books are OK to use. Otherwise, avoid them. The #1 Book to Avoid: The book I always used to recommend for the old version of the SAT is now squarely on the "Do Not Buy" list. Find out why! Since the format of the SAT changed so much in early 2016, I do NOT recommend using old SAT books to study for the current SAT. Although older SAT practice tests doshare some similarities with newer ones, you'll waste a lot of time studying for the wrong topics and questions if you don't know exactly how the old SAT differs from the current SAT. Therefore, always use books that target the current SAT (that is, books published in 2016 or later), such as the ones listed below. You can also use our online SAT prep programto learn more about your specific weaknesses and how you can improve them. Critical SAT Prep Books These are the books I believe all test takers should have, regardless of their SAT scores or what skills they need to improve. This is an extremely high standard to meet- in fact, there are only two books out of dozens I’ve tested that qualify for this title. We introduce them below. Official SATPractice Tests We’ve written at length about the importance of official SAT practice questions. As you might know, the SAT is a bizarre exam that tests concepts in ways you’ve never seen in school. Thus, you must train with realistic questions in order to accurately learn the patterns of the SAT. Official SAT tests released by the College Board are the gold standard for practice questions. At present, there are 10 official tests. These aren't exactly a "prep book" in the standard sense, but altogether they make up quite an important resource not too different from a book. Each test contains real questions given to actual students on previous administrations of the SAT. Without a doubt, the quality of official questions is far better than that of questions written by unofficial sources such as Kaplan or Barron's. Even better,all official SAT practice tests are free!You can download the tests as PDFs from the College Board website orour complete guide to official SAT practice tests. Make sure to print them out to get the realistic on-paper testing experience. Pros They're the best set of SAT practice tests you can get anywhere, period.If you want to take a full-length practice test, these are absolutely the ones you should use first. Each test is completely free to access and download. 10 full-length practice tests mean a decent amount of studying. If each test takes about four hours to take and two hours to review, that's a solid 60 hours of study time. Answers and answer explanations are available for all questions. Cons Most students will find that the answer explanations aren't that helpful for self-learning. Many explanations read like this: "A is wrong because A is wrong. B is correct for these reasons." In other words, they don't show you how to solve the question from step one. If you don't know key strategies such as how to approach reading passages or how to plug in numbers for math problems, you'll need a different resource to teach you. The tests don't offer anyother instructional material.If you’re bad at algebra, you can’t rely on this resource alone.These tests are just that- practice tests and practice questions. Nothing else! With only 10 practice tests available, there's not enough practice material for more motivated students or those seeking a large score improvement. You'll want to have one test to get used to the format and figure out your current score level, three to track your progress, one to take right before the actual test, and a couple to keep as backups. Unfortunately, you'll need more practice questions to drill with than you can get from the leftover tests to get really good at the SAT (which is why our prep program has the equivalent of four more practice tests to help you improve your skills). You have to print out the PDFs yourself to be able to work through them on paper. But in my opinion, this is better than having to buythe tests as hard copies (more on this later). Taking practice tests without a system for learning SAT content isn’t going to improve your score, and the tests don'tprovide any guidance on how to do this.Remember, mastering the SAT is as much about strategy as it is about content! SAT Prep Black Book, Second Edition TheBlack Book byMike and Patrick Barrettis the only other critical book I recommend for SAT prep. Unfortunately, the book itself isn't sufficient, and even with the practice tests above you’ll likely need supplemental help (as I explain below). What it does have, though, is so good that I believe every student studying with SAT prep books should read it. What you’ll get from the Black Book is essentially a way to think about the SAT. But what does this mean exactly? Here are a few examples: You'll learn that the SAT is designed to be a predictable, standardized test.It needs to test basic concepts so that it can be administered nationwide to all students, but it also needs to be difficult, so it often distorts questions in a weird way. It explains how every answer on the SAT must be unambiguously correct,or else test takers would complain that their incorrect answers are correct. Therefore, your main strategy should be to rule out all incorrect answer choices- this is especiallyimportant on SAT Reading. The concepts in this book were things I understood intuitively back when I took the SAT and was studying for a perfect score. This resource influenced the way I think about teaching our students at PrepScholar. Overall, of all books on the market, the Black Book aligns most closely with my personal philosophies on how to succeed on the SAT. Pros It offers a very lucid take on the SAT. Its ideas will not only change your view on the SAT but also motivate you to work harder by showing you that any student can excel on it. The book contains practical strategies that are more helpful than those in most other SAT books. Unlike other popular prep books, this one doesn’t rely on ineffective tricks. It doesn’t assume all students are the same.Rather, the book offers a few alternatives for strategies, and then suggests you try them out to see which ones work best for you. The book has a thorough set of answer walkthroughs for all Reading, Writing, and Math questions in the first four official SAT practice tests (included in the recommended "book" above). Each explanation clearly breaks down how to approach the question and get the right answer. Cons The book requires a ton of self-discipline and insight to be able to use it effectively. Because you’re learning from your mistakeswith no one there to guide you, you must be self-driven and willing to experiment with different strategies to figure out which one works best for you. For some students, following a set of straight guidelines could be less confusing. The fundamental content is lacking. If you’re weak in word problems, for example, this book alone will not help you master the subject. I believe in recognizing your weaknesses and then mastering that skill through focused prep and practice questions. While this book gives you a general approach to SAT prep, it doesn't teach you the specific content you'll need to know. It's fairly long (more than 550 pages!), with answer explanations that often feelrepetitive; however, that's partly due to the structure of the SAT itself (remember, it's a standardized test and therefore repetitive in how it tests certain skills). I personally disagree with some of the key points in this book.For example, the writers believe you should aim to reach a certain skill level rather than aim for a particular score. By contrast, I believe that setting an SAT score goal is a useful motivator. Once again, I highly recommend these two resources for all students studying with (or only with) SAT prep books. We cover most of the important concepts in the Black Book in our SAT prep program and also provide focused practice on individual skills. As mentioned above, you'll most likely need specific training on each subject to be able to shore up your weaknesses. Next, we provide you with key resources for individual subjects on the SAT. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points?We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: Best SAT Books by Subject Beyond the critical SAT books covered above, you’ll likely need supplemental help on specific SAT sections. Here, we discuss the best prep books to use for SAT Reading, Math, and Writing. These books all follow my SAT prep philosophy: Divide SAT content into skills, and then get focused training on those skills. Use realistic, high-quality questions that prep you well for the SAT. Cover only what you need to know- not advanced material that won't be on the SAT. Best SAT Reading Prep Book In my experience with thousands of students, SAT Reading is the most difficult section score to improve.This section uses logical reasoning skills that aren’t as easily mastered as math concepts or grammar rules are. As a result, it’s extremely important to learn what kinds of questions will be asked and how you can approach them in a systematic way. My recommendation for best SAT Reading book is The Critical Reader: The Complete Guide to SAT Reading, Third Editionby Erica L. Meltzer. This book dissects the SAT Reading section by question type and skill, and does a great job teaching the core of what each question is asking. It also clearly explains how to work with a passage to arrive at the correct answer. Of all writers, Meltzer uses an approach to SAT Reading prep that aligns most closely with mine: todrill questions skill by skill so you can recognize patterns. Pros It offers a great breakdown of the Reading section on a skill-by-skill level, as well as helpful strategies for every question type. This is the same approach we use in our own SAT prep program. There are lots of high-quality, realistic passages and questions.Meltzer uses passages that are extremely similar to those you’ll see on the actual SAT. The book has a helpful guide listing the questions on the SAT by skillso you can get even more focused practice. Cons The cost is somewhat high for a book that covers just one SAT section (about $30-$35). Its writing style is dry and clinicallike that of an academic textbook. It feels very formal and there are no images to break up the text. I personally prefer this style- cut out the fluff- but it can be too dense for some students. What this means is thatyou might not even read the book because you find it so boring. Its lack of creative page layouts and lots of text on large pages can get tiresome- sort of like reading a phone book. Best SAT Math Prep Book My philosophy on SAT Math is that the best way to significantly improve your Math score is to learn the underlying content.Getting familiar with math questions and learning some strategies like plugging in answer choicescan help you make some progress, but you’ll quickly run into a wall if you have gaps in your underlying math knowledge. Your best bet, therefore, is to find a book that canteach you math content in an organized way and give you practice problems you can use to focus on individual skills. It should also cater to your skill levelsince math questions that are too hard or easy for you will be a waste of time. For these reasons, I recommend Steve Warner’s series of SAT Math books.He's written multiple SAT prep books for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students, and has a set of 240 SAT Math problems organized by topic and difficulty. Pros Lessons that teach math concepts are clear and helpful. They suggest ways to speed up your ability to solve questions and help you identify what a question is really asking. Practice questions are all fairly realistic with good answer explanations. Customizing your SAT Math practice by skill level is important. If you’re scoring below 600, there’s no reason to focus on attacking the hardest questions on the test. Warner's books give you appropriate practice for your specific math level. Cons The books' categories aretoo broad, makingit difficult to find specific math concepts to practice. In contrast,our SAT programsplits large topics into smaller subjects. In algebra, for example, we go over linear functions, single-variable equations, andsystems of equations.By focusing on each individual skill, you can more accurately pinpoint your weaknesses and drill them in your prep. If you’re planning to make a large score improvement, you'll need to buy multiple SAT Math books, which can end up costing you around $100.This is pretty pricey for basically pages of practice questions. Math questions can get repetitive from book to book,as though they're being generated from templates. You definitely need to supplement these books with real practice tests to get broader exposure to how the College Board phrases SAT Math questions. The SAT has some creative, out-there Math questions that I don’t see covered well in Warner's books. If you’re really struggling with SAT Math at a basic level (say, scoring 500 and below), I recommend supplementing your work with Khan Academy’s math modules. This website is a free program that provides an engaging way to train your most basic skills. I believe the core Khan Academy program has better instruction than itsSAT prep program, even though it's not focused on the SAT. Best SAT Writing Prep Book The best way to excel at SAT Writing is to understand the grammar rules and how they appear on the test. You also need to answer a lot of high-quality practice questions to ensure you learn the patterns of the SAT (that’s how we designed our online SAT program to teach you grammar!). Once again, I’m returning to Erica L. Meltzer for her SAT grammar books.Meltzer’s fantastic at distilling all the rules of English grammar into what you need to know for the SAT; you won’t learn any arcane grammar concepts not on the SAT. For the rules that are tested, Meltzer presents them clearly and covers their foundations in case you’ve forgotten grammar rules learned in school. Unlike her single prep book covering SAT Reading, Meltzer has two books for SAT Writing: The Critical Reader: The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar, Fourth Edition: This bookcovers all SAT grammar rules you need to know and offers exercises to help you learn how to analyze grammar in the context of passages. The Critical Reader: The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar Workbook, Fourth Edition:This book offers hundreds of SAT practice questions, equivalent to six full-length Writing tests, as training material. Neither book is sufficient on its own, which is a big drawback. The first one doesn’t have enough SAT Writing questions to let you really drill grammar rules. Meanwhile, the second one doesn’t teach grammar rules, and questions aren’t organized by rule. These problems can complicate studying for students, but I still believe these are the best SAT Writing books out there. Pros Each book uses a clear writing style and cleanly articulates SAT grammar rules. The books cover only what you need to know for SAT Writing and omit extraneous material. A lot of SAT grammar books suffer from including too many esoteric rules that aren't tested on the SAT. The Writing practice questions are all fairlyrealistic. Cons There's no guidance on study strategy.The books offer a nice breakdown of the SAT, but you don't get instruction on how to use each book to best maximize your Writing score. Like other SAT resources,the price for each book is a bit high- about $30.They have good content, but I believe Meltzer could get a lot more customers by lowering her prices. I'd prefer a more unified, skill-based approach in a single book.Ideally, you'd practice single grammar rules with practice questions and then bring them all together in a full-length practice test. At PrepScholar, we believe in a unified, seamless experience, and integrate test content, customization, and feedback into a single package. Bonus: Looking for the very best guides to every SAT section? Check out our top guides for every single section of the SAT. Choose the score level you're aiming for: 800 Score Guides: SAT Reading | SAT Writing | SAT Math | SAT Essay Choose these guides if you're scoring a 600 or above on a section, and you want to get the highest SAT score possible. 600 Score Guides: SAT Reading | SAT Writing | SAT Math | SAT Essay Choose these guides if you're scoring below a 600 on a section, and you want to boost your score to at least a 600 level. These are the very best guides available on boosting your SAT score, section by section. They're written by Harvard grads and perfect SAT scorers. Don't disappoint yourself- read these guides and improve your score today. Best Books for Top SAT Scorers As you can see, you already have a lot to work on. With 10 full-length practice tests and more than five SAT books at your disposal, you'll be studying for well over 50 hours. By using the guidelines we recommend, you can make huge improvements in your score. If you still need extra practice, though, I recommend Barron's SAT prep books, especially if you want a perfect or near-perfect score. I remember using these books for my own SAT prep in high school. While their questions aren't as good as those in official SAT practice tests, they’re a solid backup source to use when you finish all the other SAT prep books above. Pros Each book offers a lot of content- thousands of practice questions and detailed lessons with many examples. The books areextremely thorough, covering every nook and cranny of what you need to know for the SAT. You can be confident that little is tested outside of what’s in these books. Cons The topics can get too difficult for what you need to know on the SAT. Some questions get unrealistically hard in a way you’d never see on the actual test. If you’re not an SAT expert yet, you won’t be able to detect when this happens and might end up wasting time studying irrelevant concepts. The books lack clear direction on what’s important and what's not for the SAT. For example, a grammar rule that appears once every SAT gets the same number of pages as a grammar rule that appears eight times on the SAT. Specifically, algebra is really important but gets far too little treatment. These are definitely not the books to use if you have limited time to study for the SAT. Not all SAT strategies are top notch.For example, I have mixed feelings about the SAT Reading passage strategies detailed in these books. Best All-in-One Book for Less Motivated Low Scorers So far my recommendations have been primarily for the super ambitious students who really want to improve their SAT scores.But I know that there are some students who just want to put in a few hours of prep, get exposure to the test, and then take the SAT and forget about it. I personally believe that for most test takers, raising your SAT score is the best way to improve your chances of college admission. If you don't want to put in hours of time to raise your score, I strongly suggest questioning your approach to test prep. Still, some of you either won't have the time or motivation to prep better. If you’re one of those just hoping to get the SAT over with, I recommend usingKaplan’s SAT Prep Plus 2019. It’s an all-in-one book that covers the three sections and has a wide assortment of practice questions and tests. The book doesn’t excel at any of what it’s doing,but it addresses the most important bases for SAT prep. It also has more reasonable content than other all-in-one SAT books like the one by The Princeton Review. The truth is, I don’t love this book. I don’t even really like it. I don’t recommend it if you actually want to improve your score and are willing to put in the study time needed to do so. However, if you just want a single resource that's easily digestible and does an OK job teaching you the basics, this book is the best one out there. Pros It covers all three SAT sections and contains five full-length practice tests. At about $20, it's quite affordable for the breadth of SAT content it covers. The book offers some basic test-taking strategies that can get you a few easy points if you're new to standardized testing and often feel like you have no idea what to do. Cons Practice questions tend to be unrealistic- the book doesn't phrase questions the way the SAT would and doesn't always test concepts correctly. In addition, the questions don’t trick you in the same ways the real test does. Answers and other materials have a lot of errors,indicatingpoor quality control. You'll probably notice many of these mistakes yourself, but if you don't catch them you'll learn the wrong facts and strategies. The strategies are not super helpful once you move past a 600 score in a section. To improve beyond this point, you'll need tomaster specific content and develop customized strategies based on your weaknesses. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points?We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: The #1 SAT Prep Book to AVOID Buying Unlike every other section in this guide, I'm making one specific recommendation againstbuying an SAT book. This is particularly unusual because, prior to 2015, this was the #1 SAT prep book to get! So what book is it? None other than The Official SAT Study Guide, 2020 Edition. It feels really weird to recommend not buying this book because, for years and years, this wasthe book to use to study for the SAT. This guide used to contain 10 full-length practice tests you could only get by buying the book. Here's the problem today, though:everything in this book is available for free online. You just go to the College Board website and download PDFs for every section of the book. (The practice tests contained in it are my #1 recommendation at the beginning of this article.) So why release this guide for free? This is all part of the College Board's move to make the SAT more accessibleto test takers and to reduce educational inequality. Such an endeavor is admirable, and I support them- but it also means thatThe Official SAT Study Guide is now a waste of money.What's more, the material outside the practice tests is superficial and overall unhelpful (we've written far better guides on the Reading, Math, and Writingsections, all of which are available on our blog for free). Pros The guide has eight official SAT practice tests pre-printed for you, so you don't need to print them out yourself. It can be ripped apart for fire kindling or birdcage lining. Cons Everything inthis guide isavailable for free through the College Board website (which actually has two additional practice tests not in this book). The book doesn’t provide any instructional material, so don't expect to actually learn skills and content here. If you’re bad at algebra, you can’t rely on this book alone. Most test takers buy it for the tests, and the College Board knows this. Taking practice tests without a system for learning isn’t going to improve your score, and the book doesn’t provide any guidance on how to do this. Other Free Resources to Help You Plan Your SAT Prep More important than buying SAT books is knowing how to use them effectively. The more prep books you have, the more important it is to build a unified study system. We've written thorough guides to help guide you through your SAT studies. Before you buy any books, though,take a realistic SAT practice test to assess what areas you're weak in. Check outour guide on how to set up a diagnostic practice testif you aren't sure where to start. After taking this first practice test, you'll need to go over your results in detail to pinpoint your weaknesses; this will help you determine where you should spend your prep time and money. For instance, if you did fine on the Reading and Writing sections but bombed Math, you'll want to focus your prep on Math and potentially invest in the SAT Math books recommended above. It's also important to set a target SAT scoreso you know what your end goal is for your SAT prep. Students aiming for around 1200 (600 on Math and600 on Evidence-Based Reading and Writing) should use different strategies and prep books than students shooting for 1600. If you're aiming for a top score, check out my comprehensive guide detailing how I got a perfect SAT score. Finally, you'll need to build a study plan that works well with your schedule and lets you figure out the best time to take the SAT. We offer a free guide explaining thefive essential components of an SAT study program guaranteed to improve your score by 160+ points. Use these free resources to guide yourself through the maze that is SAT prep. (FutUndBeidl/Flickr) Is Using SAT Prep Books the Best Option for You? There are a lot of prep methods available, and book studying is just one of them. To explore all our options, let's quickly examine whether using SAT prep books is right for you. Students who choose to study for the SAT with books do so for different reasons. Some use books because they're cheaper than other options like prep programs and tutors. That said, the best SAT books can get expensive:if you buy all top books, you'll be spending around $200.This is close to the cost of our online SAT prep program, which goes beyond books by guiding your studies step by step and motivating you to put in study time. Other students use SAT prep books because they're self-motivated and like teaching themselves. If this isn't you, books can be a disappointing way for you to spend your time prepping. Without a solid study strategy, you can put in dozens of hours yet make zero improvement since you're not understanding your weaknesses and how to fix them. By far one of the most important ways to improve your SAT score is to study and learn from your mistakes.If you can't do this reliably, you'll need extra help to get you started.We've written a free guide comparing various methods of SAT prep. Download this to see which methods are best for you. Recap: The Best SAT Book in Every Category Here's our shortlist of the best SAT prep books for 2019, complete with links: Best Critical SAT Books Official SAT Practice Tests SAT Prep Black Book (Second Edition) Best SAT Subject-Specific Books The Critical Reader: The Complete Guide to SAT Reading, Third Edition Steve Warner's SAT Math books The Critical Reader: The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar, Fourth Editionand its companion Grammar Workbook Best SAT Books for Top Scorers Barron's SAT prep books Best SAT Book for Low Scorers and Low Motivation Kaplan's SAT Prep Plus 2019 We've given you an excellent array of SAT books to choose from. Now, it's time to start looking for the ones you think will help you the most and get studying! Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or more? We've put our best advice into a single guide. These are the 5 strategies you MUST be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download this free SAT guide now: What's Next? Understanding your SAT target score is critical for success. Read our step-by-step guide to help you figure out what exact SAT score you need to aim foron test day. Want to score a super high SAT score?Get all the tips and expert advice you need in my guide to getting a perfect SAT score. Looking for additional SAT prep help?Check out our picks for the top SAT prep websites and the top SAT apps you should be using in your studies. Check out our industry-leading online SAT program. We've designed it to cover all the advantages of books and tutors at an affordable price. Featuring in-depth strategy lessons and thousands of practice questions, we have the content from the leading books. We include the critical Official SAT Study Guide above. Beyond that, the program acts like your personal tutor. It guides you step-by-step through what you should be working on at every moment to best improve your score. It customizes to your strengths and weaknesses, then gives you focused practice so you learn the patterns on the SAT. Furthermore, it motivates you to study so that you put in enough time. There's a 160 point guarantee- if you don't improve your score by 160 points, you get all your money back.

Essay Sample on Gas Prices for America

Essay Sample on Gas Prices for America Today, gas prices as a national average have risen to 2.1 dollars per gallon. This is the highest gas price increase since 1990, during operation desert storm. What is the cause of this drastic increase in gas prices? Limited supply of crude oil from the Middle East some say. Others think the cause is high trade tariffs on incoming foreign oil. But what is the solution to this problem? Is it drilling in our national wildlife reserves in Alaska? Dropping the trade tariffs and promoting free trade around the world? Perhaps we should look for alternative energy sources; maybe even a combination of all three. But whatever the solution, it needs to be done quickly. America’s gas prices are becoming so outrageous that it is becoming more and more likely that our economy will fall into a depression, and our world, so dependent upon gas for transportation, is in danger of losing the luxuries that we take for granted. Something needs to be done now. America’s main problem is the complete consumption of all the world’s recourses. A recent statistic shows that America consumes over Ã'Ëœ of all the world’s recourses and yet only makes up 1/16 of the population. One solution to this problem is for America to restrict the amount of gas that it uses. However, this would be quite difficult task because of our democratic society. Limits on amount of gas that is expended would be seen as a violation of our constitutional rights. The only thing we can do is cajole the country into understanding the issue and suggest that other means of transportation such as carpools and buses are easy to adapt to, and extremely economical. This of course has already been done with the use of carpool lanes and increases in city buses, with little effect. With so much gas being exhausted in our economy the more oil needs to be drilled or bought. President George W. Bush has recently signed an executive order to begin drilling in nation forests up in Alaska. He proclaims that there are safe and effective ways to remove the oil and cause little or no damage to the surrounding wildlife. Skeptics of his plan suggest that there is only a small amount of oil in the Alaskan forests and would therefore do our country no good. In any case the effects of this new oil excavation plan will not be in the upcoming future and thus is not an immediate answer to our current gas crisis. But there are other places in which to obtain oil, and that is from the oil rich Middle East. We do not presently have a good relationship with many of the Middle Eastern countries and this means that they are selling us the oil we need at a higher price. One solution to the gas crisis is to reconcile our differences with the Middle Eastern countries. But the animosity between us and the Middle East have been long occurring and a reconciliation attempt would result in a long and grueling negotiation with a lot of compromises from the U.S. thus making this a long and costly solution. As stated before, America is the largest consumer of gasoline and other fossil fuels in the entire world. If there was a way to rely on other means of energy such as solar, fusion engines etc. our economy could flourish. The idea of a solar or battery powered car is not a new concept but perhaps an overlooked one. Today one could purchase such an automobile and then never need to buy gas and no longer need to worry about the cost. Such technology, however, is not only risky and hard to maintain, but it is also very costly. Electric cars are known to cost a minimum of 30,000 dollars and though money is saved over time, it is still unappealing to the frugal American public. Experimental solar and fusion engines are yet to become available to the public making this an impractical solution. The final argument to assuage the rising gas prices is to drop our trade tariffs on incoming foreign oil. This solution gives us a quick and effective resolve to our countries problem. Our current system, which was designed to support America and American run industries, puts a certain cost percentage on all incoming non-domestic fossil fuels and thus increases prices higher than they should. If we were to impose no tariffs on the incoming oil then that extra percentage of cost would disappear. Not only is this an effective solution to the problem, it is a fast acting one. The effects of this resolution would be quickly discovered in a matter of months, and though it is only a small amount of decrease, it allows a small relief to the public and gives more time to create a more long lasting and efficient cure for our nations growing problem. You can order a custom essay, term paper, research paper, thesis or dissertation on Gas Prices topics from our professional custom essay writing service which provides high-quality custom written papers at an affordable cost.

How was the plot to kill president Garfield created and carried out Essay

How was the plot to kill president Garfield created and carried out Please use specific examples from book - Essay Example He had a very high means of opining about himself. He felt that he deserved to get a very powerful job in United States, and James Garfield was in the best position to offer him that job (Millard 2012). However, the president did not offer him his wish; so he plotted to assassinate him. Charles Guiteau was a republican like James Garfield and Ulysses Grant. Prior to the elections of 1880, James Garfield and Ulysses Grant were running for the presidency and James Garfield won the Republican nomination to face Democrat Winfield S. Hancock in the general elections. Guiteau had engaged in several ventures before joining politics. He then supported the Republican presidential candidate James Garfield after his favourite Stalwart candidate Ulysses Grant lost in the nomination. Stalwart was a Republican faction allied to the former president Ulysses Grant. The other faction was Half-Breeds led by President Garfield. The vice president Arthur who later took over as president after the assassination of President Grant was a Stalwart. Guiteau wrote a speech called Grant vs. Hancock which he later changed to Garfield vs. Hancock in support of Garfield (Millard 2012). He later said that his intention was to unite the two factions of the Republican Party; and one of the reasons why he murdered the president is because he thought it was the best way to resolve the divisions in the Republican Party which, according to him, were caused by President Garfield. With these political sacrifices he made, Charles Guiteau hoped that the Republican government would offer him a good job. He aimed at a diplomatic post in Vienna, and later asked for the same position in Paris. During the 1880 campaign he was all over the Republican headquarters in New York City seeking rewards for his efforts which he believed to have caused the narrow win of Garfield over Hancock. Later after the inauguration of Garfield in March 5, 1881, he went to the White House in Washington and

Implement concepts from Piagets theory of cognitive development when Essay

Implement concepts from Piagets theory of cognitive development when teaching second or third graders the skill of regrouping when solving subtraction problems - Essay Example For example, if the task at hand is to teach the children to subtract eight from 21, the instructor should group ten of the blocks together, perhaps in a tower formation, and then grouping the additional 11 blocks together in a group that is laying flat on the desk or working surface. At this stage, if the child fully understands how to count far beyond ten, they will recognize and be able to express that the tower consists of ten different blocks. The instructor would then praise this accomplishment to reinforce motivation and cooperation and then ask the child to express the amount of blocks laying on the surface. They should correctly identify that there are eleven blocks by counting them out loud one by one. At this point, the instructor reinforces that the task is to subtract eight of these blocks from the different formations and then regroup the blocks into a different series. The instructor might remove only two blocks from the tower and then six more from those on the table to provide example. The child will recognize that the tower now contains only eight blocks and should be able to regroup the surface blocks to account for the additional six blocks needed to complete the equation of 21 – 8 = 13. When the child is given free rein to perform another subtraction task through regrouping, they should accurately recognize, as part of mastery of pre-operational and concrete operational understanding, how to regroup the different blocks to achieve a positive math outcome. The teacher, for students in this phase, will not be dealing with egocentric behaviors marked by those found in children who are in the pre-operational stage and should expect full cooperation to the regrouping tasks. By allowing the children to choose their own ordered sets of blocks, based on the specific math task, they will begin to develop the ability to perform these calculations in their

Project Finance (Project Management) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Project Finance (Project Management) - Essay Example â€Å"Project finance is the financing of long-term infrastructure, industrial projects and public services based upon a non-recourse or limited recourse financial structure where project debt and equity used to finance the project are paid back from the cashflow generated by the project† (Project Finance Definition). Simply speaking, project finance is the process of accumulation of money and its investment in some particular project. Usually, there are two types of project finance – equity financing and debt financing. The debts and an interest rate are paid from the cash flows, generated by a project. Generally, project finance can be called as a part of project management. Project finance is usually a long-term process. The reason for it is that the projects financed are long-term as a rule. This process begins from looking for the ways of a project’s financing and ends with paying dividends to stakeholders and investors. . â€Å"It takes a lot more than a good idea to develop a successful manufacturing venture. You need to know where to find the resources, both financial and technological, and you need to find the right people with the right skills to do the job. Knowing where to look for these resources can save you precious time and money, and earn you some valuable partners in the process† (Sudarkasa). Identification and development of a project – any project should be presented to potential investors in some formal way. They should be able to weigh up all the pros and cons for a project. This information is needed to make a final decision whether to invest or not in a project; Determination the feasibility of the project – the main factor for investors is whether a project is able to bring social and economic benefits or not. That is why a vivid plan how to earn money should be drawn and presented to all the stakeholders. These two stages are among the most important in the process of

Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective

Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Abstract The research work is majorly classified into seven different sections. The first section deals with a brief description of CRM, its rise in the industry, its importance in the organizations and its evolution. The next section deals with Electronic Customer Relationship Management, which is the web-version of Customer Relationship Management deployable in organizations. It is a collection of work put together between various Front-end systems, Data-handling technologies and Back-end systems. All these put together form the backbone of Customer Relationship Management. Third section deals with the approaches to Customer Relationship Management. Customer Service,Campaign ManagementandSales Force Automation(SFA) are core of the CRM system and they are discussed in detail. Apart from which other modules such as Operational CRM, Analytical CRM is also presented with a brief description. Fourth section deals with the modules of Customer Relationship Management which needs to be taken into c onsideration for developing a CRM software solution. Primarily the modules of importance in most of the organizations such as Marketing module, Service module, Sales module, and Call center module are dealt with. Each of the modules is in turn covered in detail encompassing the finer divisions in individual module. Fifth section focuses on the types of Customer Relationship Management. Business-to-Business CRM, Business to -Consumer CRM and other CRM related application areas, technical functionality and support required are presented with. Additionally each section is illustrated in detail so that a future organization/individual can have a quick understanding of their requirements and adapt a one which meets their requirements. Sixth, seventh sections provide the list of software vendors, their existing products and how one can select a software as per the needs and requirements of the user. This piece of research work mainly focuses on enabling an individual to understand ones re quirements and facilitates the person in adopting a module which meets all the desired needs. 1. Introduction: Information Technology has made a huge impact on how a business operates; thereby it is being seen as an important area of commerce which needs to be tapped. Despite the large scale investments in trying to automate a business entity, many businesses have failed to attract customers. The factors such as time frame of response, understanding customer needs and new ways to attract customers are making it difficult for the businesses to cope up with. Customers pose a key role in success of an e-business and it has called for extensive research in understanding the key areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the field of Information technology. Customer Relationship Management from the Information Technology perspective is called as Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM). 1.1 What is CRM? In todays market trend, customers are more educated, better informed, more technology aware and hence demanding more in the service they buy. So, the task becomes more challenging for business managers in attracting the profitable customers. Hence, small as well as big Information technology companies are working hard for maintaining good customer relationships and reaching customer satisfaction. To improve business strategy and plans, firstly, companies need to emphasis more on customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger customer relationships. The very first approach comes in this methodology is CRM. CRM stands for the customer relationship management. It is the process or methodology used to interact with customers, which will help bring together lots of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, and customer responses and market trends. It helps businesses use available technology and resources to gain behavior and value of the customer. It broadl y covers concepts used by companies to manage their customer relationships very effectively by capturing, storing and analyzing customer information. For example by having such database created with customers need, matching customer needs and product plans and offerings, knowing what other products customer had purchased, etc. can improve product quality, indirectly improving customer relationships. Thus, CRM is the one of the important aspect in the business industries. (Eric Williams 2006) 1.2 Evolution of CRM CRM must start with an industry business strategy, which will offer positive changes in organization and work processes, which are then enabled by Information technology. In 1960s, academic researchers found that the 4Ps marketing framework i.e. product, price, place and promotion was less valuable than ongoing business relationships. By 1980s, marketing teams used to describe his new focus on understanding customer segment and achieving high customer satisfaction. In 1990s, CRM became the umbrella term; computer systems were deployed to support sales and service processes. By late 1990s, the real impact of these systems was outside the corporate world. Explosive growth in the internet usage broadened the concept as e-CRM to manage online customers. Now, multi-channel systems are available to support direct, internet and partner channels to allow user to use whatever mode of communication, they pleased. (Digital Publishing Solutions May 2007) These systems could typically answer many of the questions such as: How can oneself improve sales activities to have better idea of business improvement. How one can improve capability for leading the generation, account management and opportunities. How to make meaningful decisions on measuring the results from marketing campaign. How to resolve customer service troubles, make queue time shorter, make customer happy by offerings. All in all, how one can improve customer relationship. To answer these questions, CRM was developed to provide best operating practices in sales, marketing and customer services. This is where, companies started using CRM to store customer history, real time activities accumulation, which each department could bring up a record and see all customer interactions. 1.3 Why is CRM important? Everyone faces with the products and services at every single turn. But in realty, many of the product and service providers do actually not know the persons those using them. Major corporations failed to realize that it is the customer who is their biggest ally. Several millions of dollars are lost yearly because they failed to make profit, beat their competitors and stay ahead in this race. They wasted their money in marketing and endeavoring to gain the customers. They all are prone to make same mistake at some point of time. The main reason behind this failure was the attitude of companies towards their customers. The customer is the real king, who makes decision on failure and success of any service or product company. Many of the companies are not open to customers suggestions and more often that they do not provide the customer with a proper avenue and expel their ideas. This often leads to customers unhappiness and eventually their loss. Here comes the real need of the CRM. ( Rick Cook, 2008) CRM take into consideration the customers need and behavior towards services and products provided by companies. Companies can define their business strategy that primarily focuses on the customer, their ideas and suggestions. Benefits of CRM are listed below as business perspective: Increased sales through better timing by analyzing needs based on historic databases. Identifying improvement areas by understanding specific customer requirements. Increasing business, by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements. Identifying profit making customers. Better marketing of products. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. Enhanced customer loyalty. Improved quality communication and networking. Increased overall efficiency with reduction of total cost of sales. Better stand against global competition. Once business starts to look after existing customers effectively, effort can be made to gain new customer thus expanding market value. 2. Electronic Customer Relationship Management: Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) is the current trend with most business organizations be it small or large. The companies are hesitant in using the traditional strategies for running its businesses. The customers are treated as the most important part of the implementing a business strategy. That is the reason why ECRM has gained a lot of importance in the past decade. Romano (2001) defined ECRM as, â€Å"ECRM is concerned with attracting and keeping economically valuable customers and eliminating less profitable ones†. This aspect of the CRM which deals with the customers over its online business portals helps to identify the key customers and by spending more resources on them to make the business run better. The solutions offered to these businesses are of wide range and they are often sold as a package at very high prices. The nature of a business plays a vital role as adopting these CRM packages is not only waste of money but also huge waste of time. This could even lead to loosing customer base which are absolutely essential for running business. It is highly important to retain customers for a business as a recent study by McKinsey Co. revealed that if there is gain of 10% repeat customers then it will add about a profit of 10% to the company (Sims, 2000). It is highly obvious that a successful business should try and retain customers even though it is at a cost of their own terms. It is important to understand the three requirements that a CRM must address to be successful from IT point of view. 2.1 Front-end Systems In 2.1 shown below, the front-end systems constitute the key aspects of the business such as sales force market automation, customer service automation and application software. In case of online business or retailer, sales force and market automation is totally dependent on how the website looks and what features does it provide in order to attract and retain customers. Tracking all the customers and identify the potential customers will help the managers to take important decisions and capture the market. Customer service automation is a must as it the only place for a customer to reach out if they need any help. It includes setting up of call centers, communication technology infrastructure and websites. As these represent the face of a business it is important to automate these technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) 2.2 Data-Handling technologies The number of customers who shop increase day by day and it is impossible to keep track of them. As a result it has become obvious that one has to employ software tools which can manage the customer information and also be able to provide a proper links between them to help serve the customers. The techniques of data warehousing, data mining and knowledge management helps by making the CRM a better choice. In 2.1 below, the important modules which are part of data-handling technologies are shown. Data warehousing manages the companys data which is stored on a backend system and maintains the records regarding the data such as extracting, loading data in the repository and also managing the metadata. Data warehouses consists of business intelligent tools, tools to retrieve and manage data. Alex (2000) defines Data mining as a tool that automates the detection of relevant patterns within a database. The term explains how much a tool like this would help a business prosper; it gives the business, time to focus on the long term customers of the company and address various other issues. It helps in building strategy close to how the patterns reflect. Knowledge management uses the data warehouse and works as an intelligence tool by trying to establish new links within the data. For example, if a person searches for an item and if it is not found on the database then a tool like this could help the business by recording the information and possibly the customer. This improves the ef ficiency of business and customer satisfaction. These technologies are evidently a mark of the high standards a business can establish in order to survive their competitors within the global market (Compton, 2004). 2.3 Back-end Systems It is the backbone of the business without which everything else goes in utter vain. The data integrity is often considered a major player in getting all the acts together i.e. by bringing together the front-end systems and data handling technologies. It is important to integrate technologies into CRM as it forms a good strategy to work along with all the applications within the system. (Boon et al. 2002) The hierarchy present at the back-end systems as shown in 2.1 depicts the non-sales departments such as application software, enterprise wide applications, and ERP and supply chain management. In first stage, organization starts to analyze the Information systems available in place to suit their needs. The application software is deployed across the platforms they feel necessary and then it is important to establish a link between these applications which are called Enterprise Wide Applications (EWA). These help in interchanging the data between the application software and the systems. This could help the business establish all important background work as it highly important to maintain synergy between them and also update them whenever necessary to increase the speed with which they work. ERP forms the next stage of hierarchy wherein it integrates the EWA with the supply chain management which is a part of the front end and also data handling technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) The technology is considered to be the key player for any organizational success as it can be seen from the above literature. ‘IT infrastructure generally has been described as a set of IT services, including communications management, standard management, security, IT education, service management, application management, data management and IT research and development (Hwang et. al., 2002). ECRM is in short, the customer relationship management which is implemented electronically across the organizations. As CRM is mostly implemented as web based applications, the systems mentioned above play a crucial role in the management of CRM from small and medium businesses to very large scale organizations. Proceeding further, we will see various approaches in the implementation of CRM or ECRM. 3) Approaches to CRM: There are different approaches to CRM implementation and it is presented in different packages focusing on different aspects. In generalCustomer Service,Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Campaign Management are considered as core aspects of the CRM system. Customer service: Customer service is the provision for the customers before, during and after the purchase. â€Å"Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. (Jamier L. Scott. 2006). Its importance depends on the product, industry and customer. Customer service provided by a person or by automated mean as self-service (for example, Internet service). In bookRules are to break and Laws are to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. wrote that customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not. Further, customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence.† From the point of organization view, customer service plays important role in generation of income and revenue. From this perspective, customer service must be included as part of the overall approach to the systematic improvement. Campaign management: It may happen that company may not always require all the details pertaining to particular customers history. In such cases to avoid large sending of data and insecurity, many of the organizations prefer campaign management. Enterprise campaign management solutions allow customer to provide centralized databases to send one or multiple dialers. Rather than sending down all the record, part of the record will be send as and when required. This simplifies the management of the complex dialing campaigns. Sales Force Automation: These are the information systems, which automatically records all the stages in a sale process. Such systems keep track of the all contacts that has been made with the customer, purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts will not be duplicated, reducing the business risks. It also lists potential customers of related products. It might happen that different department may contact same customer number of times for same purpose. To avoid such a risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all the departments that deal with customer service management. 3.1 Various approaches of CRM: Operational CRM Analytical CRM Sales Intelligence CRM Campaign management Collaborative CRM Consumer Relationship CRM (White PaperonArchitecture for CRM approachesin Financial Services) Operational CRM: Operational CRM provides support for front end business processes, which includes sales, marketing and services. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers database history and company staff can retrieve information as and when required. So, the need for direct contact with customer for his requirement details will be eliminated and reaching to the customer at right time and right place will be more preferable. Operational CRM processes customers data for various purposes such as managing campaign, marketing automation, sales force automation, sales management system, etc. Few of the benefits of the operational CRM systems are as follows: It delivers personalized and effective sales, marketing and service through multiple channels. Enable 360 degree view of the customers details while interacting with them. Sales or service department can easily access history of the all customers interaction, without referring directly to customer. In sales source automation, company can automate their critical sales and sales force management tasks. Few of the examples include account management, contact management, forecasting, and sales administration keeping track of customer preferences as well as performance management. (Effective CRM Consulting 2009) In customer service and support, many companies automate some service requests, complaints, product returns and information requests. Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include volume processing capability and reliability, multiple channels support such as web, phone/fax, face-to-face, etc. In case of the Marketing Automation, information regarding business environment, industry trends macro-environment variables is stored. And then business strategy is defined. Predictive business model is defined. Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM includes the process of understanding the behaviors of customers, analyzing this data for marketing effectiveness and planning strategies of cross-selling, up-selling, etc. The process of analytical CRM starts with analyzing the customer profiles by targeting various categories of customers and evaluating their responses. These responses can be tracked using customer complaints or through transactional data or by direct customer contacts through satisfaction survey. This data of attitudinal and behavioral responses of customers is input for the next process which is nothing but customer behavior modeling. This includes building of predictive models according to the analysis data for various set of customers. The customer behavioral modeling helps to understand the homogenous customer segments. Also the methods like association discovery which is nothing but understanding the associations between the customer needs. Here only Operational CRM and Analytical CRM are discussed as they are different from the other approaches. The other approaches of CRM namely, Sales CRM, Campaign management, Consumer relationship CRM explanations are not furnished here as they are presented in very much details in the subsequent section, modules of CRM. 4) Modules of CRM: The key functionality of a CRM solution can be studied under 4 basic modules. They are Marketing, Service, Sales and Call centre. All these modules are Collaborative, Analytical and Operational. 4.1 Marketing Module The marketing module ofCRMcomprises of functionalities regarding short term execution of marketing related activities and long term planning within the company. It also helps in activities like planning, Campaign Management and lead management. Marketing module enables different communication channels to run marketing campaigns by the company, which targets potential buyers in using a product or a group of products as a message. One positive way to increase marketing effectiveness is to get better the way leads are captured and acted on. The old method is when an investigation is presented to the organizations web site; an email is generated and delivered to the department of marketing. Novel way is, a new prospect record is automatically formed in the master database which presents the lead source and campaign, assigns it to a sales representative, and emails the prospect with information or instructions scores the lead. Leads can be allocated upon product curiosity, region, or any additional defined criteria. Automated processing is defined by quicker routing and the facility to scrutinize the lead progress on a real time basis as leads are qualified and converted. The whole lot is processed and followed up in the CRM database, but more importantly such types of workflow improvements effects in greater conversion rates. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) CRM marketing tools afford the infrastructure to prop up a huge variety of lead generation strategies which may be by email marketing, through advertising, direct mail, or trade shows. CRM also facilitates the marketer with metrics which validate financial plans and establishes the worth of marketing to management and sales. Target Marketing: Attaining the correct message at the correct time from the right people is vital. Wish to aim only the decision makers those with a practical role of engineering for technical illustration at trade fare? In order to win over, organizations need to elevate consciousness among their most accessible objectives, at the appropriate time with less cost and endeavor. CRM enables an institute to manipulate the valuable knowledge captured through accessible customer relations. As CRM is in place as infrastructure, setting up and maintaining an effective route for getting customer support CRM and sales customers to enter required knowledge into the database is simple. Have a glance at marketing, the sales and support business processes and workflows, and then categorize communication and marketing opportunities. Mixed with a focus on marketing targets and tactics, now have a map to yield the value in CRM by target marketing. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Campaign Management and Effectiveness Tracking: The CRM solutions have incorporated marketing tools to support complete campaign management to conduct the webinars, the marketing campaigns, seminars, trainings, events etc. Choose targets, give invitations, obtain registrations through the web, deliver automated replies and reminders, create attendee lists, and carry out satisfaction surveys. Each detail, offline and online, may be watched, measured, and administered as part of the operation. Every movement that has been made with each of the individual analysis and clientele is captured. Outcome is radically improved marketing administration effectiveness and efficiency, along with a current, shared, and a complete picture of every touch which is made with each client and viewpoint. Icing on the cake is that marketers can obtain benefit of the data obtained to observe real-time campaign metrics, and gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns by kind, time period or medium. Email Marketing and Communications: Email marketing plan is the core of marketing success today. Email marketing is timely, cheap, and when done exactly, effectual. Along with CRM, the sales and customer support staff capture and update email addresses in the main CRM repository during their usual tasks. Its vital to confine and keep up an updated email database of clientele and scenarios. Modules of CRM have complete email marketing facilities built in. A lot of of them do have the capability to send batch emails and trace the reads. However there is a big market of well-known on demand email marketing attributes which â€Å"plug in† to CRM functionality and offer considerably better features to make generating professional email interactions better and perk up the deliverability. In addition, email programs also help to tackle the intricacies of government regulations, tracing, and delivering. If used jointly with CRM, it will have a totally fledged email marketing solution which is professional, acquiescent and effectual. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Marketing Administration: CRM can supervise marketing administration activities, which in numerous cases are time intense, not possible, and pricey to administer devoid of automation. Newsletter List Management: Saving and continuing supporting the lists of subscribers for alerts and newsletters may be a full time activity, but the task may be automated by combining a web page to the CRM repository where lists are followed up. The integration allows the subscriber to check current preferences, modify and append to their subscriptions, the login, and authenticates requests and one can send the customer an email to corroborate and thank them. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Literature Fulfillment: CRM modules can track supplies and rearrange points and direct orders for dispensation. Moreover, the user wants the ability to follow up fulfillment requests and check their order records. In few cases, literature fulfillment requests are required to come from associates, prospects, or clients via web site, all of which can be contained. Event Management: Events managing require lots of dexterity. A site must be booked, salespersons contracted, presenters scheduled, fund-raisers signed, broadcasts sent, registrations noted, fee processed, and of course the affair must be held. By making the most of CRM for event management, marketing department can with no trouble and efficiently carry out far more events, whilst building a record of sources concerned that may be required in the prospect. Customer Surveys: CRM systems can carry survey administration and consecutively can get better end results for both the corporation and the consumer. Survey invitations may be sent by email from the CRM system, provoking the member to click on a link which guides them to a web survey on organization site. The email address or an approved identifier rooted in the link can combine the study to the members details in the CRM record, where it can get details and also reported about. The CRM workflow may also send announcements as soon as a survey is received. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) 4.2 Service Module The service module of CRM focuses on how effectively the system is managing customer service which is either planned or unplanned. It helps in activities like Service Contract Management, Service Order Management, and Planned Services management, Installed Base (Equipment) Management, Warranty Management, Service Level Agreement Management, Scheduling, Resource Planning and Knowledge Management. Service contract management: Maintain a variety of service contracts, including labor contracts, standard parts and usage-based contracts. Administer service contracts, manage service-level agreements, automatically verify entitlement, and alert agents when a customers contract is about to expire. Claim and warranty management: Synchronize with third-party logistic providers to avoid unnecessary goodwill allowances and ensure timely customer credits. Handle the entire warranty and claims process, from RMA (return merchandise authorization) to receipt and inspection. Maintenance and Installation: Minimize downtime with planned protection service. Predict impact of new product installation for accurate and fast service. Track customers installed base of products and their pattern with graphical hierarchical demonstration. Customer support and service: Access data on the service histories, the service entitlements and contracts, the installed base, service levels, and the warranties by an easy-to-use communication center screen (SAP Customer Relationship Management on Environment 2006) 4.3 Sales Module This Module ofCRM Solutionsfocuses mainly on the sales team of the company to execute the pre-sales process and manage, making it more organized. The sales teams in most companies are responsible for capturing customer interaction, capturing any leads or opportunities, the CRM helps them to process this data and monitor it in the future. This helps in organizing all relevant data captured and received for a deal to be put into one place, it could hold data as expected budget, prospective customers, total spending, key players, important dates, products interested in and expected closing dates of a deal. Each of these can be stand only applications depending on organizational need. It is important that the right software is selected at the right time and more importantly implemented correctly for any CRM to be effective. Important key sales procedures includes Sales forecasting and planning: Anticipated sales volume over time and provide a total picture of predictable revenue. Augments the precision of sales forecasts and demand plans. Increase performance with coordinated planning and implementation of sales actions across all channels. Territory management: Gets better resource utilization with apparent visibility into accessibility and assignments. Consign the right sources at the correct time in the exact locations to optimize team performance. Maximize distribution of sales sources and account reporting across clearly defined areas. Accounts and contacts management: Present a single, inclusive view of all data required to supervise sales accounts. Capture, monitor and track all vital information about prospects, customers, and partners. Access key contacts, detailed customer profiles, critical relationships, critical relationships, and the position of all recent communications from any place and at any time. Activity management: Seamlessly synchronize e-mail, calendar entries, contacts, and tasks with important groupware solutions. Handle customer visits, account profiles and activity-driven sales activities. Focus on the combined energy of sales team events to proven to promote money-making b Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Abstract The research work is majorly classified into seven different sections. The first section deals with a brief description of CRM, its rise in the industry, its importance in the organizations and its evolution. The next section deals with Electronic Customer Relationship Management, which is the web-version of Customer Relationship Management deployable in organizations. It is a collection of work put together between various Front-end systems, Data-handling technologies and Back-end systems. All these put together form the backbone of Customer Relationship Management. Third section deals with the approaches to Customer Relationship Management. Customer Service,Campaign ManagementandSales Force Automation(SFA) are core of the CRM system and they are discussed in detail. Apart from which other modules such as Operational CRM, Analytical CRM is also presented with a brief description. Fourth section deals with the modules of Customer Relationship Management which needs to be taken into c onsideration for developing a CRM software solution. Primarily the modules of importance in most of the organizations such as Marketing module, Service module, Sales module, and Call center module are dealt with. Each of the modules is in turn covered in detail encompassing the finer divisions in individual module. Fifth section focuses on the types of Customer Relationship Management. Business-to-Business CRM, Business to -Consumer CRM and other CRM related application areas, technical functionality and support required are presented with. Additionally each section is illustrated in detail so that a future organization/individual can have a quick understanding of their requirements and adapt a one which meets their requirements. Sixth, seventh sections provide the list of software vendors, their existing products and how one can select a software as per the needs and requirements of the user. This piece of research work mainly focuses on enabling an individual to understand ones re quirements and facilitates the person in adopting a module which meets all the desired needs. 1. Introduction: Information Technology has made a huge impact on how a business operates; thereby it is being seen as an important area of commerce which needs to be tapped. Despite the large scale investments in trying to automate a business entity, many businesses have failed to attract customers. The factors such as time frame of response, understanding customer needs and new ways to attract customers are making it difficult for the businesses to cope up with. Customers pose a key role in success of an e-business and it has called for extensive research in understanding the key areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the field of Information technology. Customer Relationship Management from the Information Technology perspective is called as Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM). 1.1 What is CRM? In todays market trend, customers are more educated, better informed, more technology aware and hence demanding more in the service they buy. So, the task becomes more challenging for business managers in attracting the profitable customers. Hence, small as well as big Information technology companies are working hard for maintaining good customer relationships and reaching customer satisfaction. To improve business strategy and plans, firstly, companies need to emphasis more on customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger customer relationships. The very first approach comes in this methodology is CRM. CRM stands for the customer relationship management. It is the process or methodology used to interact with customers, which will help bring together lots of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, and customer responses and market trends. It helps businesses use available technology and resources to gain behavior and value of the customer. It broadl y covers concepts used by companies to manage their customer relationships very effectively by capturing, storing and analyzing customer information. For example by having such database created with customers need, matching customer needs and product plans and offerings, knowing what other products customer had purchased, etc. can improve product quality, indirectly improving customer relationships. Thus, CRM is the one of the important aspect in the business industries. (Eric Williams 2006) 1.2 Evolution of CRM CRM must start with an industry business strategy, which will offer positive changes in organization and work processes, which are then enabled by Information technology. In 1960s, academic researchers found that the 4Ps marketing framework i.e. product, price, place and promotion was less valuable than ongoing business relationships. By 1980s, marketing teams used to describe his new focus on understanding customer segment and achieving high customer satisfaction. In 1990s, CRM became the umbrella term; computer systems were deployed to support sales and service processes. By late 1990s, the real impact of these systems was outside the corporate world. Explosive growth in the internet usage broadened the concept as e-CRM to manage online customers. Now, multi-channel systems are available to support direct, internet and partner channels to allow user to use whatever mode of communication, they pleased. (Digital Publishing Solutions May 2007) These systems could typically answer many of the questions such as: How can oneself improve sales activities to have better idea of business improvement. How one can improve capability for leading the generation, account management and opportunities. How to make meaningful decisions on measuring the results from marketing campaign. How to resolve customer service troubles, make queue time shorter, make customer happy by offerings. All in all, how one can improve customer relationship. To answer these questions, CRM was developed to provide best operating practices in sales, marketing and customer services. This is where, companies started using CRM to store customer history, real time activities accumulation, which each department could bring up a record and see all customer interactions. 1.3 Why is CRM important? Everyone faces with the products and services at every single turn. But in realty, many of the product and service providers do actually not know the persons those using them. Major corporations failed to realize that it is the customer who is their biggest ally. Several millions of dollars are lost yearly because they failed to make profit, beat their competitors and stay ahead in this race. They wasted their money in marketing and endeavoring to gain the customers. They all are prone to make same mistake at some point of time. The main reason behind this failure was the attitude of companies towards their customers. The customer is the real king, who makes decision on failure and success of any service or product company. Many of the companies are not open to customers suggestions and more often that they do not provide the customer with a proper avenue and expel their ideas. This often leads to customers unhappiness and eventually their loss. Here comes the real need of the CRM. ( Rick Cook, 2008) CRM take into consideration the customers need and behavior towards services and products provided by companies. Companies can define their business strategy that primarily focuses on the customer, their ideas and suggestions. Benefits of CRM are listed below as business perspective: Increased sales through better timing by analyzing needs based on historic databases. Identifying improvement areas by understanding specific customer requirements. Increasing business, by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements. Identifying profit making customers. Better marketing of products. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. Enhanced customer loyalty. Improved quality communication and networking. Increased overall efficiency with reduction of total cost of sales. Better stand against global competition. Once business starts to look after existing customers effectively, effort can be made to gain new customer thus expanding market value. 2. Electronic Customer Relationship Management: Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) is the current trend with most business organizations be it small or large. The companies are hesitant in using the traditional strategies for running its businesses. The customers are treated as the most important part of the implementing a business strategy. That is the reason why ECRM has gained a lot of importance in the past decade. Romano (2001) defined ECRM as, â€Å"ECRM is concerned with attracting and keeping economically valuable customers and eliminating less profitable ones†. This aspect of the CRM which deals with the customers over its online business portals helps to identify the key customers and by spending more resources on them to make the business run better. The solutions offered to these businesses are of wide range and they are often sold as a package at very high prices. The nature of a business plays a vital role as adopting these CRM packages is not only waste of money but also huge waste of time. This could even lead to loosing customer base which are absolutely essential for running business. It is highly important to retain customers for a business as a recent study by McKinsey Co. revealed that if there is gain of 10% repeat customers then it will add about a profit of 10% to the company (Sims, 2000). It is highly obvious that a successful business should try and retain customers even though it is at a cost of their own terms. It is important to understand the three requirements that a CRM must address to be successful from IT point of view. 2.1 Front-end Systems In 2.1 shown below, the front-end systems constitute the key aspects of the business such as sales force market automation, customer service automation and application software. In case of online business or retailer, sales force and market automation is totally dependent on how the website looks and what features does it provide in order to attract and retain customers. Tracking all the customers and identify the potential customers will help the managers to take important decisions and capture the market. Customer service automation is a must as it the only place for a customer to reach out if they need any help. It includes setting up of call centers, communication technology infrastructure and websites. As these represent the face of a business it is important to automate these technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) 2.2 Data-Handling technologies The number of customers who shop increase day by day and it is impossible to keep track of them. As a result it has become obvious that one has to employ software tools which can manage the customer information and also be able to provide a proper links between them to help serve the customers. The techniques of data warehousing, data mining and knowledge management helps by making the CRM a better choice. In 2.1 below, the important modules which are part of data-handling technologies are shown. Data warehousing manages the companys data which is stored on a backend system and maintains the records regarding the data such as extracting, loading data in the repository and also managing the metadata. Data warehouses consists of business intelligent tools, tools to retrieve and manage data. Alex (2000) defines Data mining as a tool that automates the detection of relevant patterns within a database. The term explains how much a tool like this would help a business prosper; it gives the business, time to focus on the long term customers of the company and address various other issues. It helps in building strategy close to how the patterns reflect. Knowledge management uses the data warehouse and works as an intelligence tool by trying to establish new links within the data. For example, if a person searches for an item and if it is not found on the database then a tool like this could help the business by recording the information and possibly the customer. This improves the ef ficiency of business and customer satisfaction. These technologies are evidently a mark of the high standards a business can establish in order to survive their competitors within the global market (Compton, 2004). 2.3 Back-end Systems It is the backbone of the business without which everything else goes in utter vain. The data integrity is often considered a major player in getting all the acts together i.e. by bringing together the front-end systems and data handling technologies. It is important to integrate technologies into CRM as it forms a good strategy to work along with all the applications within the system. (Boon et al. 2002) The hierarchy present at the back-end systems as shown in 2.1 depicts the non-sales departments such as application software, enterprise wide applications, and ERP and supply chain management. In first stage, organization starts to analyze the Information systems available in place to suit their needs. The application software is deployed across the platforms they feel necessary and then it is important to establish a link between these applications which are called Enterprise Wide Applications (EWA). These help in interchanging the data between the application software and the systems. This could help the business establish all important background work as it highly important to maintain synergy between them and also update them whenever necessary to increase the speed with which they work. ERP forms the next stage of hierarchy wherein it integrates the EWA with the supply chain management which is a part of the front end and also data handling technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) The technology is considered to be the key player for any organizational success as it can be seen from the above literature. ‘IT infrastructure generally has been described as a set of IT services, including communications management, standard management, security, IT education, service management, application management, data management and IT research and development (Hwang et. al., 2002). ECRM is in short, the customer relationship management which is implemented electronically across the organizations. As CRM is mostly implemented as web based applications, the systems mentioned above play a crucial role in the management of CRM from small and medium businesses to very large scale organizations. Proceeding further, we will see various approaches in the implementation of CRM or ECRM. 3) Approaches to CRM: There are different approaches to CRM implementation and it is presented in different packages focusing on different aspects. In generalCustomer Service,Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Campaign Management are considered as core aspects of the CRM system. Customer service: Customer service is the provision for the customers before, during and after the purchase. â€Å"Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. (Jamier L. Scott. 2006). Its importance depends on the product, industry and customer. Customer service provided by a person or by automated mean as self-service (for example, Internet service). In bookRules are to break and Laws are to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. wrote that customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not. Further, customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence.† From the point of organization view, customer service plays important role in generation of income and revenue. From this perspective, customer service must be included as part of the overall approach to the systematic improvement. Campaign management: It may happen that company may not always require all the details pertaining to particular customers history. In such cases to avoid large sending of data and insecurity, many of the organizations prefer campaign management. Enterprise campaign management solutions allow customer to provide centralized databases to send one or multiple dialers. Rather than sending down all the record, part of the record will be send as and when required. This simplifies the management of the complex dialing campaigns. Sales Force Automation: These are the information systems, which automatically records all the stages in a sale process. Such systems keep track of the all contacts that has been made with the customer, purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts will not be duplicated, reducing the business risks. It also lists potential customers of related products. It might happen that different department may contact same customer number of times for same purpose. To avoid such a risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all the departments that deal with customer service management. 3.1 Various approaches of CRM: Operational CRM Analytical CRM Sales Intelligence CRM Campaign management Collaborative CRM Consumer Relationship CRM (White PaperonArchitecture for CRM approachesin Financial Services) Operational CRM: Operational CRM provides support for front end business processes, which includes sales, marketing and services. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers database history and company staff can retrieve information as and when required. So, the need for direct contact with customer for his requirement details will be eliminated and reaching to the customer at right time and right place will be more preferable. Operational CRM processes customers data for various purposes such as managing campaign, marketing automation, sales force automation, sales management system, etc. Few of the benefits of the operational CRM systems are as follows: It delivers personalized and effective sales, marketing and service through multiple channels. Enable 360 degree view of the customers details while interacting with them. Sales or service department can easily access history of the all customers interaction, without referring directly to customer. In sales source automation, company can automate their critical sales and sales force management tasks. Few of the examples include account management, contact management, forecasting, and sales administration keeping track of customer preferences as well as performance management. (Effective CRM Consulting 2009) In customer service and support, many companies automate some service requests, complaints, product returns and information requests. Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include volume processing capability and reliability, multiple channels support such as web, phone/fax, face-to-face, etc. In case of the Marketing Automation, information regarding business environment, industry trends macro-environment variables is stored. And then business strategy is defined. Predictive business model is defined. Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM includes the process of understanding the behaviors of customers, analyzing this data for marketing effectiveness and planning strategies of cross-selling, up-selling, etc. The process of analytical CRM starts with analyzing the customer profiles by targeting various categories of customers and evaluating their responses. These responses can be tracked using customer complaints or through transactional data or by direct customer contacts through satisfaction survey. This data of attitudinal and behavioral responses of customers is input for the next process which is nothing but customer behavior modeling. This includes building of predictive models according to the analysis data for various set of customers. The customer behavioral modeling helps to understand the homogenous customer segments. Also the methods like association discovery which is nothing but understanding the associations between the customer needs. Here only Operational CRM and Analytical CRM are discussed as they are different from the other approaches. The other approaches of CRM namely, Sales CRM, Campaign management, Consumer relationship CRM explanations are not furnished here as they are presented in very much details in the subsequent section, modules of CRM. 4) Modules of CRM: The key functionality of a CRM solution can be studied under 4 basic modules. They are Marketing, Service, Sales and Call centre. All these modules are Collaborative, Analytical and Operational. 4.1 Marketing Module The marketing module ofCRMcomprises of functionalities regarding short term execution of marketing related activities and long term planning within the company. It also helps in activities like planning, Campaign Management and lead management. Marketing module enables different communication channels to run marketing campaigns by the company, which targets potential buyers in using a product or a group of products as a message. One positive way to increase marketing effectiveness is to get better the way leads are captured and acted on. The old method is when an investigation is presented to the organizations web site; an email is generated and delivered to the department of marketing. Novel way is, a new prospect record is automatically formed in the master database which presents the lead source and campaign, assigns it to a sales representative, and emails the prospect with information or instructions scores the lead. Leads can be allocated upon product curiosity, region, or any additional defined criteria. Automated processing is defined by quicker routing and the facility to scrutinize the lead progress on a real time basis as leads are qualified and converted. The whole lot is processed and followed up in the CRM database, but more importantly such types of workflow improvements effects in greater conversion rates. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) CRM marketing tools afford the infrastructure to prop up a huge variety of lead generation strategies which may be by email marketing, through advertising, direct mail, or trade shows. CRM also facilitates the marketer with metrics which validate financial plans and establishes the worth of marketing to management and sales. Target Marketing: Attaining the correct message at the correct time from the right people is vital. Wish to aim only the decision makers those with a practical role of engineering for technical illustration at trade fare? In order to win over, organizations need to elevate consciousness among their most accessible objectives, at the appropriate time with less cost and endeavor. CRM enables an institute to manipulate the valuable knowledge captured through accessible customer relations. As CRM is in place as infrastructure, setting up and maintaining an effective route for getting customer support CRM and sales customers to enter required knowledge into the database is simple. Have a glance at marketing, the sales and support business processes and workflows, and then categorize communication and marketing opportunities. Mixed with a focus on marketing targets and tactics, now have a map to yield the value in CRM by target marketing. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Campaign Management and Effectiveness Tracking: The CRM solutions have incorporated marketing tools to support complete campaign management to conduct the webinars, the marketing campaigns, seminars, trainings, events etc. Choose targets, give invitations, obtain registrations through the web, deliver automated replies and reminders, create attendee lists, and carry out satisfaction surveys. Each detail, offline and online, may be watched, measured, and administered as part of the operation. Every movement that has been made with each of the individual analysis and clientele is captured. Outcome is radically improved marketing administration effectiveness and efficiency, along with a current, shared, and a complete picture of every touch which is made with each client and viewpoint. Icing on the cake is that marketers can obtain benefit of the data obtained to observe real-time campaign metrics, and gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns by kind, time period or medium. Email Marketing and Communications: Email marketing plan is the core of marketing success today. Email marketing is timely, cheap, and when done exactly, effectual. Along with CRM, the sales and customer support staff capture and update email addresses in the main CRM repository during their usual tasks. Its vital to confine and keep up an updated email database of clientele and scenarios. Modules of CRM have complete email marketing facilities built in. A lot of of them do have the capability to send batch emails and trace the reads. However there is a big market of well-known on demand email marketing attributes which â€Å"plug in† to CRM functionality and offer considerably better features to make generating professional email interactions better and perk up the deliverability. In addition, email programs also help to tackle the intricacies of government regulations, tracing, and delivering. If used jointly with CRM, it will have a totally fledged email marketing solution which is professional, acquiescent and effectual. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Marketing Administration: CRM can supervise marketing administration activities, which in numerous cases are time intense, not possible, and pricey to administer devoid of automation. Newsletter List Management: Saving and continuing supporting the lists of subscribers for alerts and newsletters may be a full time activity, but the task may be automated by combining a web page to the CRM repository where lists are followed up. The integration allows the subscriber to check current preferences, modify and append to their subscriptions, the login, and authenticates requests and one can send the customer an email to corroborate and thank them. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Literature Fulfillment: CRM modules can track supplies and rearrange points and direct orders for dispensation. Moreover, the user wants the ability to follow up fulfillment requests and check their order records. In few cases, literature fulfillment requests are required to come from associates, prospects, or clients via web site, all of which can be contained. Event Management: Events managing require lots of dexterity. A site must be booked, salespersons contracted, presenters scheduled, fund-raisers signed, broadcasts sent, registrations noted, fee processed, and of course the affair must be held. By making the most of CRM for event management, marketing department can with no trouble and efficiently carry out far more events, whilst building a record of sources concerned that may be required in the prospect. Customer Surveys: CRM systems can carry survey administration and consecutively can get better end results for both the corporation and the consumer. Survey invitations may be sent by email from the CRM system, provoking the member to click on a link which guides them to a web survey on organization site. The email address or an approved identifier rooted in the link can combine the study to the members details in the CRM record, where it can get details and also reported about. The CRM workflow may also send announcements as soon as a survey is received. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) 4.2 Service Module The service module of CRM focuses on how effectively the system is managing customer service which is either planned or unplanned. It helps in activities like Service Contract Management, Service Order Management, and Planned Services management, Installed Base (Equipment) Management, Warranty Management, Service Level Agreement Management, Scheduling, Resource Planning and Knowledge Management. Service contract management: Maintain a variety of service contracts, including labor contracts, standard parts and usage-based contracts. Administer service contracts, manage service-level agreements, automatically verify entitlement, and alert agents when a customers contract is about to expire. Claim and warranty management: Synchronize with third-party logistic providers to avoid unnecessary goodwill allowances and ensure timely customer credits. Handle the entire warranty and claims process, from RMA (return merchandise authorization) to receipt and inspection. Maintenance and Installation: Minimize downtime with planned protection service. Predict impact of new product installation for accurate and fast service. Track customers installed base of products and their pattern with graphical hierarchical demonstration. Customer support and service: Access data on the service histories, the service entitlements and contracts, the installed base, service levels, and the warranties by an easy-to-use communication center screen (SAP Customer Relationship Management on Environment 2006) 4.3 Sales Module This Module ofCRM Solutionsfocuses mainly on the sales team of the company to execute the pre-sales process and manage, making it more organized. The sales teams in most companies are responsible for capturing customer interaction, capturing any leads or opportunities, the CRM helps them to process this data and monitor it in the future. This helps in organizing all relevant data captured and received for a deal to be put into one place, it could hold data as expected budget, prospective customers, total spending, key players, important dates, products interested in and expected closing dates of a deal. Each of these can be stand only applications depending on organizational need. It is important that the right software is selected at the right time and more importantly implemented correctly for any CRM to be effective. Important key sales procedures includes Sales forecasting and planning: Anticipated sales volume over time and provide a total picture of predictable revenue. Augments the precision of sales forecasts and demand plans. Increase performance with coordinated planning and implementation of sales actions across all channels. Territory management: Gets better resource utilization with apparent visibility into accessibility and assignments. Consign the right sources at the correct time in the exact locations to optimize team performance. Maximize distribution of sales sources and account reporting across clearly defined areas. Accounts and contacts management: Present a single, inclusive view of all data required to supervise sales accounts. Capture, monitor and track all vital information about prospects, customers, and partners. Access key contacts, detailed customer profiles, critical relationships, critical relationships, and the position of all recent communications from any place and at any time. Activity management: Seamlessly synchronize e-mail, calendar entries, contacts, and tasks with important groupware solutions. Handle customer visits, account profiles and activity-driven sales activities. Focus on the combined energy of sales team events to proven to promote money-making b