CRM stands for "customer relationship management." It is commonly used to refer to software that is used to manage contact information and interactions.

The CRM is available on both the event and organizational level. Generally, you will want to manage contacts on the event level. Contacts can safely be deleted from an event CRM without removing them from other events.

The organizational CRM in Lennd structures contacts into Groups and People. You can see at a glance which contacts are associated with which events, and open a contact record profile for more information.

Most data that is collected in Lennd is stored against a contact (group or person) record. It's important to understand what this means before you edit, delete, or reuse data fields as questions in multiple events.

The benefit to managing contacts in the organizational CRM is for teams who manage multiple events within the same organization. Contacts can be copied over to cloned events so they do not need to be manually added via a form or import.

Another benefit is the ability to reuse field data from year to year. For example, if you are creating a vendor application form, you can use reference fields to pull contact information that would likely not change over time. When the applicant logs in, they can see the information that is on file and edit if required.

NOTE: some fields may not be suitable for reuse -- any field that is meant to be event-specific or retain historical data should be retained as-is.

Example: you want your vendors to submit a valid Certificate of Insurance that names the event as an additional insured. For liability reasons, this certificate must be retained for five years. You are building a form for the second year and notice a "COI" field was used previously to collect this.

In this case, it's recommended that you name the original field "2021 COI" (or whatever year is relevant) and create a new field named "2022 COI." That way you are keeping your 2021 data safe, and storing new 2022 results in a separate place.

Once contacts have been added to your database (via form, portal, or import), they will be visible in the CRM. You can customize the dashboard view to display certain fields, form results, etc.