At its core, CRA is very similar to customer relationship management (CRM). The main difference between the use of these two terms seems to be that while CRA pertains more to the analysis of stored data, CRM most often applies to systems that make existing data visible during interactions with customers, or to systems that generally present a picture of an individual customer, not necessarily for data mining, but for general reference. For example, a simple visual sheet with customer contact info would usually fall under CRM, while a software product that analyzes hundreds of customers and sorts them into actionable categories would fall under CRA.

CRA can provide results such as profitability analysis, which can project who is likely to make purchases in a given scenario. It can also make other projections to help give a business a clearer picture of its prospects with a customer base. As with CRM, CRA can also help a business to generally "know," and therefore serve, its customers better. One of the main challenges of CRA reported by experts is the task of fitting these tools into an existing IT structure.