Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a technology-supported initiative that takes care of all your company interactions and professional engagements with your customers/potential customers. A CRM focuses on improving customer and business relations, streamline processes, and improve the aspect of profitability. In short, CRM is a system or a tool that helps business organizations in staying connected to their customers, process streamlining, and sales management. CRM lets businesses focus on the human aspects such as customers, services, suppliers, colleagues. However, these are not the only functional aspects of a CRM as it can also help in business development, recruiting, and marketing.
The rising use of CRM in the organizations on a global level has triggered the growth factor in the market on a global level. As per the CRM industry trends, regions such as North America and Western Europe are high mature markets whereas APAC contains the medium-level market maturity. Countries such as India, China, and Australia are considered as developing with respect to the global CRM market. Aspects such as consumer satisfaction, consumer engagement, customer retention, consumer acquisition, voice of the customer, field management, and lead management are considered as the key growth drivers. Being the emerging markets, APAC and LATAM are focusing on the aspects such as Mobile CRM, analytics, and SaaS. CRM buyers usually have preferences in terms of streamlines operations such as customer support and sales and marketing.
The Top 3 CRM Trends:
Here is a look at the top 3 CRM trends.
1. The global CRM market is highly mature and diverse in general. The key factor that differentiates different CRM vendors from one another is their ability to generate and provide cross-functional data. Customer data through different platforms such as sales, marketing, and customer support play a vital role in any organization’s growth and profitability. Therefore, buyers prefer channels and vendors that offer one-stop solutions and are also integration ready.
2. CRM SaaS is getting more popular as the buyers prefer a software which is more user-friendly and functional. The CRM deployment model is also changing due to a diverse user-base, low maintenance, and cost-effectiveness. Vertical suppliers are also gaining popularity as the enterprises are more focused towards product specification and capability rather than the supplier’s strength. For instance, suppliers such as Veeva and Cegedim cater only to the pharmaceutical industry and they only work as per their niche.
3. No single CRM solution is suited to the needs of all the business organizations as this is not a one size fits all solution. Each CRM requires a tailor-made approach for achieving 100 percent efficiency and suiting to specific business needs. Aspects such as sales, marketing, customer support, and e-commerce change as per the location and niche of the business and therefore, the CRM has to change accordingly to deliver full capability.
The CRM industry is quite dynamic and therefore, it must be viewed with utmost discretion and care. The industry is also growing at a rapid pace in different regions and the business owners have to seek the best possible solution as per their specific needs.