Revolution gives way to evolution; Companies swept up in last year's customer relationship management craze are now discovering CRM's sophistication as a marketing tool.

Most companies spent last year waking up to the realization that all business is really e-business. That is to say, businesses of the future must create an online platform that drives Internet-based sales, service and marketing activities to be successful, and such success starts and ends with good customer relationship management.

But if most Web-savvy corporations now take customer management as a given, this year the smartest organizations will begin

refining how they deploy CRM applications. They'll begin to realize that CRM is not about a single domain-not just about sales or marketing, for instance-but creating an enterprise wide environment where every bit of

information about the customer lives on forever.

In this data-rich world, customer-centric information will be pushed out more and more to new channels such as wireless devices, to evolving functions such as supply chain management and warehousing, and to burgeoning platforms such as e-marketplaces. CRM will encompass new tools like voice-over Internet protocol and Web collaboration that will gain ground as more companies become comfortable with the technologies. And marketers will be able to create …