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8 CRM Trends to Watch and Adopt

  

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Last year, the two hot customer relationship management (CRM) trends to watch - and adopt - were social CRM and mobile CRM.

CIO.com surveyed CRM vendors and analysts to get their perspectives on CRM trends in 2012 and published their results in 8 CRM Trends to Watch.

Among those surveyed was SugarCRM’s CTO and co-founder, Clint Oram. He spoke about flexibility as a trend to watch for: “As users better understand the options in delivery models, interfaces, data practices and other technical aspects of CRM, they are factoring these variables into their buying decisions." He continued, "That will give CRM applications designed for ease of integration and user self-customizability an advantage, and will leave vendors whose products come in a single flavor of SaaS scrambling to expand customer options, often through cumbersome workarounds."

The CRM Trends highlights include:

1. Cloud-based CRM services continue to grow. 
    
2. It's all about the interface: CRM software should be accessible on both a traditional and mobile platform - with a customisable, user-friendly interface. 
    
3. A single place to keep all your customer data: Centralised customer data helps building quality relationships, providing better service and targeted offers. 
    
4. CRM integration with other critical business systems: to get more efficient business processes and an integrated view of the customer.
    
5. It's all about flexibility: in CRM delivery models, interfaces and data practices. CRM applications should be designed for ease of integration and user self-customisability.
    
6. CRM continues to go social as CRM vendors incorporate even more social capabilities into their products.
    
7. Mobile CRM is increasingly important to support customer-facing workers.
    
8. Crowdsourcing process improvements: Better understand customer expectations and prioritise process improvements by harnessing the voice of the customer.

Those CRM solutions that are flexible, social, mobile, integrated and easy to use will win the race. Which CRM trends have you implemented, or intend to implement this year?