Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a general term that describes the effort to identify, record, report, and organize customers, their history, behavior, and details to provide a business with complete, up-to-date information. CRM includes all business processes in sales, marketing, and service that touch the customer. In contrast to customer care, Customer Relationship Management tends to be used to deal more specifically with the integration of all business functions with each other. A result of this  integration is the ability for businesses to become transparent to their customers and the company representatives.    Additionally, a successful CRM solution depends on the ability to interact with customers through any channel they choose, as well as a way to track and maintain real-time records of customer interactions so a complete view of the customer can be established. Effective CRM delivers the personalized, informed service on-demand that customers expect. An informed response comes from a system that provides a complete profile of the customer, including all past and ongoing interactions, regardless of the medium. The primary methods of contacting customers today are technology-based approaches that include telephony, email, web services, and remote facilities. To allow a customer to interact with a business transparently there are many interoperability issues that must be considered when upgrading a current technology. Many times middleware, and complex enhancements must be performed to integrate the different business areas effectively. That is, if such an attempt is even possible. Single-branded, highly scaleable CRM solution frameworks that provide highly robust application extensibility avoids hard-to-maintain, unreliable systems who's costs increase yearly. While many solutions are designed for very-large enterprises, and are associated with very large costs, significant functionality has been extended to mid-tier enterprise level. Provided in functional modules defined by business functionality, company's can begin with a baseline solution and add to the framework. ITSG is a Microsoft CRM Solutions Provider. Terms