1 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provides your company with new ways of better understanding and serving your customer. In July 1998, when Intel began taking orders over the Internet, it also premiered a new Web-based system to deliver confidential documents to its B2B direct customers. 2 This service, known as Information Desk, along with other new Web-based information delivery services, has enabled the company and its direct, indirect and channel customers to work together more efficiently. In Intel's case, there were several reasons for deploying CRM, including : With Web-based information delivery, everyone can get important information at the same time no matter where they are located. 3 The first release of Intel's information delivery system slashed document delivery time from as much as two to three weeks to an average of three days. Now, it's a matter of minutes. Extend reach without adding staff. Intel has added services to upwards of 75,000 global resellers. 4 As a result of getting confidential documents faster, three-fourths of Intel's direct customer engineers shaved a week or more off their product development cycle. When it came to designing the system, Intel used best-of-breed, off-the-shelf applications and modified them to meet the needs of their customers. Indirect customers received an Electronic Design Kit (EDK) to help develop their own products and solutions. 5 And because CRM is a field in which new applications appear frequently, it was important to develop a flexible software architecture and an agile hardware infrastructure. Intel runs its CRM systems on dual and 4-way Intel-based servers, with back-end databases distributed over 8-way Intel-based servers. This gives the company a powerful, flexible and highly available infrastructure.