5 CRM trends to seize on in 2012
- 30 November, 2011 10:20
- Comments 4
Next year will carry big expectations for Customer Relationship Management systems (CRMs).
Firstly, the businesses who use them will be expecting them to do more (and for less). Secondly, end customers — increasingly aware of what CRM systems are capable of — will be even more insistent that businesses deal with them as they expect.
In short, businesses will be looking to their vendors for help with doing more with CRM, and we expect to see a combination of new and old capabilities receive more attention.
Here are some CRM trends CIOs should watch for in 2012:
- Anywhere. Anytime.
It’s become a mantra for good reason: Anywhere/anytime computing offers enormous benefits in the CRM space.
In 2012, mobility and the cloud will continue to create opportunities for businesses to engage with customers in intelligent ways across all touch points.
While they don’t have to go hand-in-hand (indeed many businesses continue to be concerned about the cloud’s ability to keep confidential customer information safe), they are a powerful combination.
The ability to instantly check what’s in the pipeline, or for outstanding issues, just before speaking with a customer is now a required tool. And in the new year, the push from staff for CRM applications on their mobile and tablet devices will only intensify.
- Any insight.
CRM systems generate and collect a great deal of data. Unfortunately, much of this information goes to waste because the possibilities for exploiting it are ignored.
The ball is in the CIO’s court when it comes to improving the value their businesses can extract from the latent data in their applications through better exploitation of marketing, market insight and customer engagement opportunities.
This is more about getting the full potential from existing features than it is about utilising new ones, but it’s something I think CIOs will be driving in 2012.
CRM vendors will also have a role to play in educating businesses about what’s possible.
- Customer-isation.
We all know that customers are demanding better, faster and more integrated experiences.
Indeed, many of the businesses we deal with are reporting an increasing impatience on the part of customers who feel that ‘the system should know’ when it comes to their identity, purchase history and other details.
2012 will see savvy end customers who are increasingly aware about the capabilities of CRMs, meaning businesses will need to focus on delivering coherent interactions online, in person and on the phone.
Being behind the ball in this regard will be less and less affordable.
- Social networks.
Some businesses are finding social media a tough ask, with plenty of scope for both success and failure.
It’s a difficult area but social CRM has matured. In 2012, expect to see much better social monitoring and engagement tools integrated into CRMs.
These bring two essential functions to the table. Firstly, they make monitoring for commentary on social networks easier and, where commentary is adverse, putting out spot fires much faster.
Secondly, social CRM allows for faster community-building and management, across sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — providing businesses to create and (as far as possible) control the online conversation space around their products.
Done right, social CRM implementations will see businesses become more effective in social media, with more metrics around results.
- More for less.
Because of the cloud, the excuses for CRM vendors offering less than complete feature sets and capabilities in their CRM offerings are fast vanishing.
In 2012, this will translate into reduced costs for CRM users — or steady costs but for more powerful solutions.
Summing up
Businesses should be looking to increase the communication, knowledge sharing and business insight opportunities they can leverage from their CRM systems in 2012.
With mobility, coherent customer experience and social engagement becoming the norm, it’s in the better use of analytics that companies are likely to find and win more business and develop a competitive advantage.
Ian Whiting is CEO of CRM, ERP and POS experts Markinson Business Solutions.
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Comments
Joshua Jan M. Saligumba
1
Most organizations nowadays are in fierce competition not just with each other but also with regards to technologies. Technology develops daily and organizations find it extremely challenging to keep up. Then there is certainly the need to use technology inside your business properly, efficiently and to capitalize on it. This is a customer relationship management system and This system is developed to manage the interactions with clientele. It makes use of technology to synchronize and organize the sales departments activities in an automated system. CRM systems have now been designed further to contain the marketing, client services and technical support activities.
As an IT Developer we must apply CRM system because it can be used to enhance client satisfaction and to form essential company decisions and It is a tool to gauge the company's relationship with its clients.CRM systems generate and collect a great deal of data and The Businesses should be looking to increase the communication, knowledge sharing and business insight opportunities they can leverage from their CRM systems,We all know that customers are demanding better, faster and more integrated experiences.
John Marc T. Young
2
In today’s world technology is growing on a constant rapid pace and businesses are expanding on a major scale. Meeting the customers demand along with business growth and cutting-edge technology makes it difficult for a business entrepreneur to manage the complete business process. Overcoming these obstacles Custom CRM development plays an important role by helping the businesses, allowing them to easily manage and optimize their complete business process cycle.
CRM, abbreviated as Customer Relationship Management is a web-based software solution which allows managing the complete business process cycle. A custom CRM solution serves various industries in numerous fields including insurance and banking, software and IT, oil & gas, manufacturing and retail and many others. Furthermore, it is developed on the latest software technology platform both Microsoft and open source.
Vince S. Chu
3
many changes in the technology that CRM vendors are using for development and application. We can expect to see more consolidation in technologies and companies. As you consider CRM solutions, make sure that you pay attention to how tightly integrated the CRM vendor's modules really are. Some CRM vendors have literally taken years to come out with integrated modules after purchasing a CRM-related technology vendor that had specific CRM technology or functionality. 2001 has also seen several CRM vendor mergers and acquisitions which should lead to more “best-of-breed” software choices. When evaluating CRM technology, focus on the CRM vendor as a whole rather than a specific aspect of the company's product/service offering. The technology may be “hot” but more importantly, the vendor must have the resources and experience to deliver that technology to you based on your CRM system requirements and schedule. Also remember that technology accounts for at most 20 percent of the overall success of a CRM initiative (with people accounting for at least 50 percent and processes accounting for at least 30 percent).
Shaine K. Go
4
many changes in the technology that CRM vendors are using for development and application. We can expect to see more consolidation in technologies and companies. As you consider CRM solutions, make sure that you pay attention to how tightly integrated the CRM vendor's modules really are. Some CRM vendors have literally taken years to come out with integrated modules after purchasing a CRM-related technology vendor that had specific CRM technology or functionality. 2001 has also seen several CRM vendor mergers and acquisitions which should lead to more “best-of-breed” software choices. When evaluating CRM technology, focus on the CRM vendor as a whole rather than a specific aspect of the company's product/service offering. The technology may be “hot” but more importantly, the vendor must have the resources and experience to deliver that technology to you based on your CRM system requirements and schedule. Also remember that technology accounts for at most 20 percent of the overall success of a CRM initiative (with people accounting for at least 50 percent and processes accounting for at least 30 percent).