The IT industry must drive a lot of us potty. Why can't the big names in the industry stop using technical jargon and scary acronyms? We would all be so much better off.

Here is a great example. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we happened to chat about computer software. He's frustrated because he knows that his IT system should be delivering a whole lot more to the business, but he's not sure where to invest.

It all came to a head last week, he said, when a customer called him and said that after 15 years trading with his company, they would have thought it not too much trouble for us to spell their company name right and send information to the right person in the business.

"The trouble is", he told me, "I keep trying to get some straightforward IT information, but I can't get past the jargon."

It turned out that he is looking for software that will hold all of his customer information so that his service and sales team can provide a better joined-up service to the customers.

He also wants to be able to write to customers with details of special offers as well as monitor which sales are going to be coming down the pipeline into the business. And if that's not too much, he also wants to be able to do some prospecting by writing to a list of target companies. Oh, and one final thing - he wanted all of the names to be spelt correctly.

I told him that he had just described exactly what a CRM system will do for the business. "But I don't want an oversized solution," he moaned. "We're only a small business with 30 employees. CRM is for big corporate businesses - it costs a fortune, and rarely works as advertised."

I explained that CRM is now affordable to even the smallest business, and we are seeing huge demand from many businesses who want to get the basics right and improve professionalism in service and sales.

Well if that's what CRM will do for smaller businesses, why don't you just say so in English rather than hiding behind your clever acronyms? If you had called it Sales, Marketing and Customer Services software for smaller businesses, I would probably have bought it years ago," he said.

Now we've cleared that up, imagine what Smacs software for smaller businesses could do for your company.

* Mark Joynson is regional managing director of IT specialist Technology Services Group. TSG provides consultancy, computer networks, software, training and service to more than 1,000 businesses across the North-East. www.tsg.com or 0845-155-0180.