CRM is a hot concept, and rightly so. The acronym stands for Customer Relationship Management system.

Typical CRM functions include:

• Capturing leads from your web site
• Assigning leads for followup
• Tracking information and opportunities that present
• Calendaring to make sure that contacts are made
  
• Email list management
  

Other functions may include basic document management, a "dashboard" overview screen, mail merge, quotes/invoices, and others.

We recommend SugarCRM , a web-server based solution, with the attendant ease of deployment, and convenience of being able to work from anywhere that there is an Internet connection.  From an IT perspective, you have the flexibiity to choose between:

-A completely hosted, On-Demand solution

-An on-premise "appliance", a complete server that comes to you ready to run, or

-An on-premise installation to your own server