When choosing CRM software for your small business, it is critical that you understand the difference between Contact Centric CRM and Account Centric CRM. This is one of the biggest mistakes companies make when choosing CRM.

This article is a bit on the technical side, but well worth the read.

There are two basic paradigms for CRM systems: Contact centric or Account Centric. In Contact Centric systems, the primary organization is around independent contacts. In Account Centric systems, there are two levels to the basic organization: a company or account layer to which multiple contacts can be related.

CONTACT CENTRIC

In a contact centric system, the database is organized around individual contacts. So, if you have dealings with 3 different people all from the same company, you would have 3 different contact records and in each record would be the company name.

There may be ways to relate different contacts together, but these will be in the "workaround" class.

A Contact centric organization makes sense if you are dealing with individuals and you do not need to do such things as look at an organization