The CRM & business glossary

Software for managing a company’s interactions with current and prospective customers across the whole lifecycle.

A person or organisation that has shown interest in your product or service but has not yet been qualified as a genuine opportunity.

Assigning a value to each lead based on fit and behaviour to prioritise follow-up.

A lead judged likely to become a customer based on marketing engagement, ready to hand to sales.

A lead that sales has vetted and accepted as a real opportunity worth pursuing.

The set of stages a deal moves through from first contact to close.

A specific sales opportunity with an associated value, stage and expected close.

The narrowing journey from many leads at the top to fewer customers at the bottom.

The percentage of leads or deals that advance to the next stage or become customers.

The rate at which customers stop doing business with you over a period.

A company or organisation you do business with, often containing multiple contacts.

An individual person you communicate with, linked to an account.

A living group of contacts or accounts defined by shared attributes or behaviour.

A projection of expected revenue from the current pipeline over a period.

Software that helps sales teams configure products, apply correct pricing and generate accurate quotes quickly.

A formal document offering products or services at stated prices and terms.

A confirmed customer order that authorises fulfilment and billing.

A document requesting payment for goods or services delivered, with tax and totals.

The approval and process for a customer to return goods, often for refund or replacement.

A document reducing the amount a customer owes, issued against an invoice.

India’s unified indirect tax on the supply of goods and services.

A standardised numbering system for classifying goods, used on GST invoices.

A GST invoice reported to the government portal in a standard format and assigned an IRN.

Tax deducted by the payer at the time of certain payments and remitted to the government.

Matching transactions in your books against an external record such as a bank statement.

An RBI-regulated framework letting individuals and businesses securely share financial data with consent.

The structured list of all accounts used to record a business’s financial transactions.

Money owed to a business by its customers for delivered goods or services.

Money a business owes to its suppliers and vendors.

The official programmatic channel for businesses to message customers on WhatsApp at scale.

A series of automated messages sent on a schedule or triggered by behaviour.

Comparing two variants of a message to see which performs better before full rollout.

Capturing website or form submissions directly into the CRM as leads.

The percentage of recipients who opened an email campaign.

Building relationships with leads not yet ready to buy until they are.

Identifying which channels and campaigns generated a lead or sale.

Tracking and honouring customers’ permissions for how their data and channels are used.

A commitment to respond to or resolve customer issues within defined times.

A tracked record of a customer issue or request from creation to resolution.

A system for receiving, organising and resolving customer support requests.

A measure of how satisfied customers are with a product, service or interaction.

A loyalty metric based on how likely customers are to recommend you.

A composite indicator of how well a customer relationship is going.

The process of getting a new customer set up and successful with your product.

Encouraging an existing customer to buy a higher-value option.

Selling complementary products to an existing customer.

A unique code identifying a distinct product or variant for tracking.

A running record of every stock movement that derives current quantities.

An order for an item that is currently out of stock, to be fulfilled later.

Counting a subset of inventory regularly to keep records accurate without a full stocktake.

The stock level at which a new purchase should be triggered to avoid running out.

A document a buyer issues to a supplier specifying goods, quantities and prices.

Confirmation that ordered goods have been received, updating stock.

An architecture where one software instance serves many isolated customers (tenants).

Software delivered over the internet on a subscription rather than installed locally.

A defined way for software systems to talk to each other programmatically.

An automated message sent from one app to another when an event occurs.

Granting permissions based on a user’s role rather than individually.

India’s data-protection law governing the processing of personal data.

The European Union’s comprehensive data-protection and privacy law.

A person’s right to have their personal data erased on request.

The requirement that data be stored within a specific geographic region.

A numerical representation of text that captures meaning, used for AI search.

Search that understands intent and meaning rather than matching exact words.

A database optimised for storing and searching embeddings by similarity.

A chronological record of who did what and when within a system.

A legally recognised way to sign documents digitally.

Ensuring one customer’s data cannot be accessed by another in shared software.

Assessing whether a lead is a genuine fit and worth pursuing before investing sales effort.

A lead that has shown real interest but has not yet committed to buying.

A lead showing strong, immediate buying intent.

The planned sequence and rhythm of touches — calls, emails, messages — used to engage a prospect.

The share of deals that end in a win out of all deals closed in a period.

The typical value of a won deal over a given period.

How quickly deals move through the pipeline to produce revenue.

The revenue or activity target assigned to a salesperson or team for a period.

Dividing markets among salespeople by geography, industry or account type.

A description of the company or person who gets the most value from your product and is most valuable to you.

A semi-fictional profile of a typical buyer — their goals, pains and decision style.

The full path a person travels from first hearing about you to becoming a loyal customer.

Any moment a customer interacts with your business — an ad, an email, a call, an invoice.

A recurring meeting where a team inspects open deals, risks and forecasts.

A preliminary bill sent before goods or services are delivered, often used for approvals or advance payment.

The legally compliant invoice that records a taxable sale, with GST details included.

A service that securely processes online payments between customer and business.

India’s real-time payment system that transfers money instantly between bank accounts.

A view of unpaid invoices grouped by how long they have been outstanding.

The structured process of reminding customers about overdue payments.

Formally recognising that an unpaid amount will not be recovered.

The money available for day-to-day operations — current assets minus current liabilities.

The movement of money in and out of a business over time.

The time a customer is allowed between receiving an invoice and paying it.

Verifying a vendor bill against its purchase order and the goods actually received before paying.

The total revenue a customer is expected to generate across the whole relationship.

The total cost of winning one new customer, including marketing and sales effort.

The share of customers who stay with you over a period.

Outreach aimed at re-engaging customers who have lapsed or gone quiet.

Confirming a subscription twice — sign-up plus a confirmation click — before sending marketing.

The ability of your emails to actually reach inboxes rather than spam folders.

The share of recipients who clicked a link in your message.

Software that runs marketing tasks — sends, follow-ups, list updates — automatically based on rules and behaviour.

Something valuable offered free — a guide, a tool, a checklist — in exchange for contact details.

The prompt that tells a reader exactly what to do next — book, buy, reply, download.

Engaging customers consistently across channels — email, WhatsApp, web, phone — as one continuous conversation.

How long a customer waits for the first reply after raising an issue.

How long it takes to fully resolve a customer issue from creation to closure.

Moving an issue to higher priority or more senior attention when it risks breaching expectations.

A library of help articles customers and agents use to find answers.

A saved reply template for common questions, personalised before sending.

A secure space where customers view their own invoices, tickets and documents.

Letting customers solve problems themselves through portals, articles and automated answers.

The defined ladder of who gets involved as an issue grows in severity or age.

A full physical count of inventory to verify recorded quantities.

Using or selling the oldest stock first.

Following a group of items produced or received together through stock and sales.

A scannable code identifying a product for fast, error-free entry.

The common Indian term for a warehouse or storage location.

Requiring a second proof of identity — like a code on your phone — beyond the password.

Scrambling data so only authorised parties can read it, in storage and in transit.

Keeping secure copies of data so it can be restored after loss or error.

The proportion of time a service is available and working.

Software that answers questions, drafts content and performs tasks using artificial intelligence.

A qualification framework checking a lead’s budget, buying authority, need and timing.

A documented set of plays, scripts and steps a team follows to sell consistently.

The ratio of open pipeline value to the target for a period.

An early sales conversation to uncover a prospect’s needs, context and fit.

Addressing a prospect’s concerns or hesitations to move a deal forward.

A focused strategy that targets specific high-value accounts as markets of one.

An internal advocate at a prospect who supports your solution and helps it win.

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers including expansion, net of churn.

A lead with little current interest or engagement.

Equipping sales teams with the content, tools and data they need to sell effectively.

An electronic document required for the movement of goods above a threshold value under GST.

The unique number assigned to a GST invoice when reported to the government e-invoicing portal.

The credit a business claims for GST already paid on purchases, offset against GST collected on sales.

A document increasing the amount a buyer owes, often for undercharges or extra goods.

A GST mechanism where the recipient, not the supplier, pays the tax.

The average number of days it takes to collect payment after a sale.

The predictable subscription revenue a business earns each month.

The value of recurring subscription revenue normalised to a full year.

Money received for goods or services not yet delivered, recognised over time.

Revenue minus the cost of goods sold, expressed as a percentage of revenue.

A report listing all ledger balances to check that debits equal credits.

A financial statement summarising revenue, costs and profit over a period.

A statement of a business’s assets, liabilities and equity at a point in time.

A credit arrangement where payment is due a set number of days after invoicing, e.g. Net 30.

A metric measuring how easy it was for a customer to get an issue resolved.

Resolving a customer’s issue in the first interaction, without follow-ups.

The set of unresolved support tickets waiting to be handled.

A saved set of actions and replies an agent applies to a ticket in one step.

Resolving customer questions through self-service before they become tickets.

Using AI to detect the emotional tone in customer messages.

The structured capture of customer feedback, needs and expectations.

Tags added to a URL to track which campaign, source or medium drove a visit.

The share of emails that could not be delivered, or visitors who leave without acting.

An email standard that specifies which servers may send mail for your domain.

An email standard that cryptographically signs messages to prove they are genuine.

A policy standard that tells inboxes how to handle mail failing SPF or DKIM.

A list of contacts who must not be emailed, such as unsubscribes and bounces.

A measure of how actively recipients interact with your content or messages.

Tailoring content and offers to a recipient using their data and behaviour.

Extra inventory held to guard against demand spikes or supply delays.

The total cost of a product once freight, duties and handling are included.

Moving inventory from one warehouse or location to another.

The list of components and quantities needed to build a finished product.

Inventory that is not selling and ties up cash and space.

Issuing stock with the earliest expiry date first.

An AI technique that grounds answers in retrieved documents rather than model memory alone.

When an AI model produces confident but false or unsupported information.

The instruction or question given to an AI model to produce a response.

An AI model trained on vast text that understands and generates human language.

Logging into multiple applications with one set of credentials.

Data that can identify a specific person, such as name, phone or email.

Under India’s DPDP Act, the entity that decides why and how personal data is processed.