Today, the software for customer relations management (CRM) enjoys high public interest. With the help of the software and the strategy, companies can optimize sales processes and improve customers’ experience with their services. CRM solutions are especially interesting today when most businesses are seeking various ways out of the crisis. A recent study by BSI Business Systems Integration AG carried out among 149 visitors of CRM forum in Switzerland demonstrates that the majority of the polled companies (80%) are already using professional CRM instruments, at least in some areas of activities.
However, CRM as a strategy can be viewed from two sides: on the one hand, there is a strategy, on the other – its technical implementation. According to the data of Capgemini consulting company, as part of the CRM-Barometer project, CRM activities were in decline due to the financial and economic crisis, but before the end of 2010, it will regain its pre-crisis positions and may ever outrun them. This year, only 38% of managers decided to limit their CRM activities compared to 62% in late summer of 2009The question of which topics in the CRM sphere will be the most important in the next 12 months returned a surprisingly unequivocal answer almost two out of three respondents name customer relations management the most important aspect of business success. Primary attention should be given to building relations with customers and to the structuring of information about clients.
Unlike CRM activities, the information technologies that create software platforms for them experience certain difficulties. Companies are trying to save money on the standardization and automation of business processes. Besides, pretty popular and effective can be such tools as gamification of CRM.
According to Gartner, a prominent IT research company, businesses pay increasing attention to find new clients and increasing sales volume, but they do not intend to invest any extra dollar in this. This year, the increase in expenses on CRM solutions will amount to 0.7% compared to 2009. The growth is small but compared to other software market segments, CRM still shows quite good results.
According to the study of the IT market in Germany, published by IDC in 2010, the small scale of growth is largely due to the temporal recession in the development of the IT market as a whole. Only starting with 2011, the trends will go up: the growth will be not fast but steady. Since 2011, the growth rate will rise and by 2014 it will reach 5%. Experts predict that the most prospective directions will be data security and CRM solutions.
