| | MARCH 20208 IN MY OPINIONBy Mushtaq Ahmad, Chief Information Officer, CSS Corp he CRM software market size is expected to reach USD 80 billion by 2025, and the battles to claim a stake have already begun. At the forefront of the action are some leading technology trends that will shape up the CRM landscape in 2020. Boost in Cloud-based ServicesBy moving the on-premise CRM to Cloud, enterprises have brought in substantial real-time intelligence and 360-degree views of customers and prospects. The cloud migration has enabled them to fuse demand chains with supply chains and channelize their digital transformation around their customers. Hassle-free installations, coupled with remote data migration and upgrades, bring in a level of flexibility that on-premise services lack. Moreover, with expenses on hardware, server, and software maintenance eliminated, the Cloud-based CRM makes customers the real winner. The Need for MobilityLeading research has found that 65 percent of sales reps who work on mobile CRM achieve their targets, versus a mere 22 percent working on a traditional model. By adding mobility to the primary source of all critical customer-information ­ the CRM, it can be made available anytime, anywhere - making an organization much more responsive to its customers. A robust mobile-CRM strategy can not only increase productivity but also boost sales revenue. Improvement in data quality due to real-time data entry and the flexibility to choose devices with different screen sizes and data syncing capabilities are bound to increase the mobile CRM adoption rate in the coming years. The Rise of Social CRMAs per Nucleus Research, social CRM can boost customer experience and, thus, retention by as much as 26 percent. It opens up a whole new paradigm by feeding sales, marketing, and service with unstructured customer data captured from real-time conversations - pulsing through innumerable tweets, comments, and likes, all at an incredible speed. By combining the high-velocity social communication data with a CRM that incorporates social analytics and commerce, companies can convert customer interactions into instant sales opportunities. The integration of social media interactions to the CRM can eliminate the guesswork and construct a clearer picture of consumers' needs and wishes. Compliance with Data RegulationsCustomer data is at the core of any CRM. The same data can become a double-edged sword if not appropriately managed. Several data regulations are already in force and this trend is going to continue and will become more stringent. Hence it will become necessary for CRMs to have robust data collection and management capability to comply with various data regulations. A Surge in AI-driven Use CasesAI is poised to drive CRM capabilities to new levels of customer engagement, leading to market expansion with new use cases across unexplored market opportunities. The areas consummate for prolific growth include: targeted customer segmentation, lookalike data modeling, programmatic advertising, smart media buying, and hyper-personalization of the customer experience, to name a few.TCloud Wars & Mobile Accords - Trends that Could Impact CRM in 2020Mushtaq Ahmad, Chief Information Officer
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