For example, have your CFO look at customer data, your head of manufacturing look at customer info, and so on.

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They do not hold confidential customer data like credit card info. (In fact, the companies that need to keep confidential data, like financial and health services firms, are still not embracing cloud based systems as of yet.) But for the rest of us, CRM systems are basically places that store activities, appointments, emails, notes and phone calls.

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The software has the intelligence to determine how data in one source (like customer names) are related to data in another (like customer transactions) and to reformat info to reconcile presentation differences (like a middle initial).

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Land Rover and Jaguar have launched sites that function as blogs, that customer and journalists alike can access for up-to-date company info, complete with Twitter feeds, original videos, and hyperlinks to websites followed by the company.

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