This year's top ten trends in CRM innovation
Trends to watch out for.
In 2010 CRM efforts were largely focused on results-oriented activity, sustainability and customer retention. CRM was primarily used as a platform for nurturing and developing a better understanding of customers and using this increased knowledge to develop relationships. This was critical to businesses as a result of the economic climate and the changing dynamics of customers and internal resources that this climate created. We saw an increasing number of organisations evaluating cloud-based solutions and starting to use social media.
And what about this year? 2011 is about productivity improvements first and foremost, with an emphasis on continuing to drive customer retention. Here are my top 10 trends for 2011.
1. Social Customer Engagement
With customers increasingly asking why should we do business with you?, driving brand awareness and differentiation will be key to business success, and social media is one way of doing this. With advancements in CRM software and the concept of social connectors, access to social media content will be more attainable and enable greater usage.
2. Streamlining Marketing and Sales to drive revenue-based outcomes and a move away from activity-based outcomes
Marketing and Sales need to be aligned to ensure that they are working together to drive the same outcomes – not just generating activity, but activity that is converted into revenue. CRM systems offer continued business process automation, greater access to shared data and goals and greater visibility of activity. And, more importantly, they show how and where this activity has turned into revenue.
3. Greater access to data and metrics at a personal user level
Users today expect more from their CRM system than ever before. They expect to have access to their data in a personalised format that works for them. Executives should expect their CRM system to deliver user-friendly dashboards that can be personalised by the end user and provide visual cues that will allow employees to focus on high priority activities.
4. Growth of mobile applications and the empowerment of customer-facing employees
With the release of Windows Phone 7, Apple iPads, Windows-based tablets and the ever-increasing usage of smartphones and iPhones, businesses are realising the value these devices can bring to the employee in the way in which they engage with customers and capture information. Although wide-scale adoption of mobile CRM applications in a pure CRM sense is unlikely, I do see a greater opportunity to select specific business processes that can be implemented on a mobile phone or tablet to improve customer-facing employees’ productivity.
5. Growth of SaaS understanding and impact on business
SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud-based solutions reached a tipping point in 2010, with a few adopters, small and large. In 2011, with the introduction of Microsoft CRM 2011 Online as a subscription-based service provided by Microsoft, SaaS will become increasingly mainstream.
6. Extending CRM to realise greater ROI across the business
CRM can be extended to drive greater ROI and integration into other business-critical processes, not just within the Sales and Marketing functions. If we look at why some CRM implementations fail, it’s often because they are only ever deployed to a single department and never progress beyond it. As a manager or executive, CRM needs to be a long-term commitment with optimisation and improvement activity planned every financial year.
7. Continued alignment of companies and web experience
2011 will see a continued growth in organisations’ web presences, along with a need to maintain customer data through informative and interactive web channels. This will be aided by CRM applications becoming better integrated with web-based channels. Businesses should therefore focus on how they can take advantage of the ever-growing web, community-driven sales and self-maintenance of customer data, with their CRM system as a central part of this picture.
8. Greater choice demands consistency in approach
Consumers and organisations are looking for consistency in approach and communication. To win in an environment where data is easily accessible, businesses need to drive competitive advantage through consistent customer interaction at all levels and through all channels – whether it’s the web, a mobile application or face-to-face. Consistent interaction can be orchestrated through a CRM system using business process automation, dialogue-based interactions and accessible, useable information. Service will therefore become an increasingly important differentiator.
9. Customer Data Management best practice continues to be an issue
Although it remains key for all businesses, the management of customer data is still a challenge for organisations and CRM systems. Organisations need to focus on the quality of customer master data and task the ‘business owners’ with taking responsibility for its quality.
10. Repeatability of engagements
A common reason for the failure of CRM systems is that processes are reinvented for each engagement and lessons learnt are not revisited. A well implemented CRM system and document management solution can drive consistency, reduce cost and improve visibility of engagements across a wider user base. CRM solutions need to encourage repeatability through standardised processes, interactions and document management through the customer lifecycle.
steve.foster@intergen.co.nz