2014IIM KOZHIKODEPRASHANT YADAVPGP/16/218[SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRM]IntroductionSocial networking sites are exploding and the hype with interest is also growing. Among them, Facebook leads with 200 million users in 2009. However, the data does not represent the exact facts because it remains difficult to sort the facts from the available data. At high levels, social networks are described as the convergence of technologies that allow individuals to easily communicate and share information. But today, the question no longer concerns social networks, but their use in business. Businesses are trying to take advantage of social media by looking for unique strategies and tactics to derive value from it. Gartner Research shows that there is a sharp increase in investments in social networks by companies (Metz, 2008). If used effectively, social media sites can truly enable our salespeople, marketing professionals, and customer service agents to develop and grow meaningful relationships with customers. The true value of social media sites cannot be achieved in isolation. Rather, it is necessary for organizations to take stock of their customer management and core business process initiatives, then identify and reflect on the value improvement task and scale these initiatives. The paper discusses concrete ways in which today's organizations can extract business value from social media after leveraging it with customer relationship management (CRM). The importance of social networks for businesses. Social networking sites offer users the opportunity to communicate with each other. Also, they allow users to find like-minded people. After they discovered each other...... middle of paper......indisputable. Yet many of today's sales organizations still struggle to translate this into real business benefits. By acquiring tools that can enable them to manage their social media activities alongside traditional marketing, sales and service activities, organizations will benefit from social media without being distracted from their core business. Ultimately, success will come easy for businesses that successfully integrate with social networks that provide them with a wealth of customer data, unfiltered comments and informal conversations and convert them into insights. Microsoft helps our customers achieve this goal with the Social Media Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This gives organizations the capabilities to better understand, listen, analyze, respond and formulate social media activities..