For the past couple of decades, customer relationship management has been quietly establishing itself as the way everybody does business. Migrating to the education community only in the past five years or so, it has acquired a more genteel transcription of its acronym: constituent relationship management. However one decodes the letters, CRM is both a communications strategy and the computer technology that carries out that strategy. It helps an organization optimize its marketing and sales efforts by tracking all the interactions a customer or constituent has with an organization, collecting the data, and sharing the aggregate data in a coherent fashion throughout the organization. At independent schools, community and small colleges, and large universities alike, CRM is widely used at both ends of an individual's education experience--during the recruitment and admissions process and throughout the years that follow departure from school. To a much lesser degree, CRM is beginning to be deployed as the student matriculates and advances through school. Although many institutions may have purchased the capability to integrate one CRM system throughout their entire institution, allowing them to track individuals from prospective or admitted students through graduation and beyond, few have streamlined their data management to such an extent.