CRM trends 2019: fun to read, dangerous to believe
Who did what on holidays, and we read the predictions of the CRM market. We started patriotically and introduced “crm 2019 forecast” in Yandex, but got ... our own Habrovsky article from the beginning of 2017 at the 4th place of issue. The first three are also a bit about that. Well, let's go through the English-language sites - there were a lot of trends there: from reports of analytical agencies to Forbes. We read everything that was on the first two pages of the issue, weed out the marketing husk, identified the trends and became sad. This is another, marvelous world, in which they hack about what AI in CRM will be in 2019. In our country compatriots are being cut, basically, about how much AI will cost, but the other is AI-95. And this is neither good nor bad. We just go the other way.
Let's pour ourselves some tea or coffee and read what CRM is waiting for in the world in the coming year, and at the same time we estimate what CRM is waiting for in Russia. Mostly even exciting! Fallout 4. Well, for some coffee?
First, let's try to understand why there are so few analysts and forecasts in Russia? First, most of the trends are generated by the global giants Salesforce, Oracle and SAP. They represent the sum of clusters of developers, research centers, purchased startups, etc. These companies in their volume are not comparable with any developer of CRM and ERP-systems in Russia. Secondly, CRM in Russia is still a luxury for small and medium businesses and bluff for large. There are few companies that implement CRM to work calmly and effectively. Our business automation is a very special market, with its own rules and customer needs. And it is very different from the west. Third, the Russian business has not yet formed the prerequisites for a need, for example, in artificial intelligence (AI) or on the Internet of things (IoT).
Whether abroad, in Europe, or in the USA, is the cult of business efficiency and the long-established cult of automation. CRM-system for them is an interesting and useful tool with which you can earn more. For example, according to the IDC report, AI related to CRM activities will increase global business revenue by $ 1.1 trillion by the end of 2021. And how much will it increase in Russia? We do not know. But we in RegionSoft Developer Studio, like no one, know that there is a steady growth in demand for CRM systems, a business is beginning to understand the value of automation as an investment object and as a tool. It is especially pleasant to observe this trend in an average, small and micro business.
However, first things first.
Experts evaluate AI as a relief for routine manual tasks, such as scoring leads, entering some data and even calling customers (not informational, but in the form of a dialogue). Thus, employees will be able to devote almost all of their working time to customer service, focusing on consulting tasks. In fact, each client, regardless of status and category, will receive his personal manager. The work of artificial intelligence to increase sales is associated with the use of blockchain, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP).
In principle, the beginnings of artificial intelligence have long been used in chat bots and scoring systems, some CRM have gone deeper and use entire platforms (for example, Einstein Salesforce, IBM Watson, etc.). However, in order for such AI elements to work for you in a company, you need to train this intelligence on data, and this is big, very big data. For example, scoring deals. Imagine that you have 5000 transactions in the database - this is quite a lot for small and medium businesses, but it is extremely small that the AI, based on the input data, correctly estimates the probability and outcome of the transaction. So far, artificial intelligence in most systems (including Russian) is just marketing based on following the Gauss distribution. Well, and all the more so, an adequate business conversation between a robot and a human being is impossible, too many nuances and surprises.do not add optimism .
All these people are sick today. They call it a flu epidemic.
This trend for many years. A business should accumulate big data in a CRM system or software integrated with it, and then correctly process and interpret them. And then data mining begins - a process that uses mathematical, statistical and machine learning methods to extract knowledge and other useful information for later decision making. Experts say that companies have previously collected data, but failed to process them, but now, with artificial intelligence, the data will be obtained efficiently and will benefit all parties: business and customers. Data sources: gadgets, wearable electronics, social networks, sensors, etc.
Indeed, in the history of business automation there were many approaches to data analysis. The most notable of them is the era of OLAP, when aggregated information (slices) was issued on the basis of data arrays. These were (and are) huge complex analytical systems, with long processing of information, sensitive to the quality of data. In Russia, they turned out to be in demand only in very large companies or in a business with active data generation (telecom operators, retail, HoReCa). One of the coolest examples of software with OLAP capabilities onboard is CBOSS.
At the same time, it was time for dashboards - informative graphs, histograms and other ways of graphically displaying the main indicators on one page or in one window. Many CRM-systems of the past (and the present) have excelled in creating dashboards. By the way, we haveRegionSoft CRM never had them - not that we are visionaries and foresaw that in 2019 dashboards will be an atavism, no. But we, as users of a CRM system and as a business, understood that all this beauty takes a development resource, but it is not very informative. Regular tabular reports and selections using filters are much more useful and relevant. Actually, if you refer to GitHub reports, ratings, etc., you will see that the table view of the data prevails.
Now the era of big data, you can not argue here - each of us daily generates a bunch of information that our electronic devices and devices aggregate at cash registers, tags at the entrance to the store and so on. For access to this data, the business will be happy to sell the soul, because it is the guarantor of the most accurate target for advertising, which means a high probability of purchase. But here there is a mass of technological and legal issues - how to collect, to whom to sell, where to store, etc.
Yes, data is the future, but this is not for every business. It seems that the information will be difficult and expensive. As expensive as processing facilities and computing power and high-end analytics for interpretation. In the Russian small and medium businesses, only a few companies have come to such approaches in working with data, otherwise everything is rather prosaic.
Pure marketing trend. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have generated a huge number of ideas for use: from households to security systems. In Russia, Alice is actively conquering the IT world, for which skills are written that are already applicable to business problems.
It is assumed that the integration of CRM-systems with voice assistants will enable dictation and quick access to information using voice commands. Well, that is, the sales manager is sitting and saying: “Alice, call LLC“ Horns and hoofs ”, something like this.
Beautiful move, the feeling of tomorrow. But it is not clear how to apply it within CRM systems. Dictation is still imperfect: the system can record incorrect data, and this is a series of errors in documents, letters, processes and long-long correction. Voice control of the interface is also a dubious story: extra noise in the office, recognition errors, more entertainment than business. We see more the use of voice assistants in retail, medical care, transportation, etc. In CRM, this if there will be, it is solely as a “price tag”.
- Alex, tell me the new status of major incident number 255?
- Oh, better sit down before you hear it.
Data needs to be collected not only big, but also correct - in this way you can find out everything about the client and sell exactly what he wants. Experts believe that by doing so they do great things and deserve exceptional customer loyalty. In fact, abroad it is. One Russian company operating in the B2C sector throughout Europe and America sent out on national holidays and for an experiment on birthdays. These days a lot of answers came from the category: “So cute, so amazing! Think about me! Nice! ”(And conversion after).
In Russia, the audience reacts more hard to such personal invasions. In B2B sphere, excessive personalization can generally lead to paranoia and suspicion of espionage. Therefore, it is better to avoid hyper personalization through a CRM system and know the measure, so as not to harm your own reputation.
Experts predict an increase in the use of mobile CRM-systems. This is already a stray trend from 2010-2012 at least. Its main message sounds like real-time access anytime, anywhere. A good message, we even deliver a mobile version of our CRM on demand for it. But how many of those involved in business on the screen of a mobile phone? Look at the screen time in the mobile - do you have a lot of business applications there? Here is the screen of one of our busy employees - as you can see on the first lines of purely personal questions:
Mobile CRM as a working tool has the right to life, but, of course, it cannot be a trend - only a matter of inquiry of each company. Yes, for corporate chats, a mobile phone is a pretty thing, and for active work in automation systems it’s a dubious thing.
Experts and analysts point out that open source CRM is also steadily growing in popularity. More and more users prefer to use open source solutions for customization and implementation in the company.
Yes, the growing interest in open source is a global trend, and it is not bad. The bad thing is that many users do not understand that open-source is not equal to “free” or “freebie”, but contains big expenses. In order for free software to work as a full-fledged element of the IT infrastructure, you need to hire a developer with appropriate skills and experience (about 100–120 thousand rubles a month at least), purchase a development environment (the price is different), conduct a full analysis companies, take into account that support for open-source vendors is quite expensive (this is a significant part of their income), etc. Therefore, it is not as free as many believe.
Analysts see IoT in CRM as the future of customer service, sales promotion, improved service, and increased loyalty (the very hyper personalization). The Internet of Things is designed to provide business with maximum information about customers, as well as provide an opportunity to remotely fix problems by learning about them using sensors as quickly as possible. Thus, it will be an automation, capable not only of a point-like effect on events around a client, but also capable of preempting some kind of trouble. In conjunction with the CRM can get a really powerful solution.
IoT + CRM in words looks attractive, and there are already examples of successful use of this bundle, BUT! Unfortunately, for the time being everything rests on the task of broadcasting advertising as close to the user as possible. And any advertising, even the most technological, quickly begins to annoy. I would like to see this trend in the key of the service and solving customer problems.
Actually, these are seven basic predictions in the field of CRM for 2019, which we managed to crystallize. The numbers are also impressive. According to foreign statistics, the use of CRM increased from 56% to 74%. Detailing shows that 91% of enterprises with more than 11 employees currently use CRM, compared with 50% of them with 10 employees or less. CRM gives a visible result. The Forrester study notes that 50% of teams using CRM reported improved performance, and respondents saw a total reduction in labor costs by 20%. And if the values of productivity in Russia may be the same, the level of implementation of CRM in a company with a small number of employees is much lower. I would like to believe that it is somewhere at the level of 40-50% (as our polls on Habré show), but it feels lower.
Well, let this beautiful and optimistic infographics complete the discussion of foreign trends.
There is no absolutely safe CRM system - neither cloudy nor server. And in CRM is stored a critical asset - customer base and commercial information. Vendors are still faced with the problem of ensuring complete security of information in the system: from force majeure, unscrupulous employees, competitors, hackers, etc. However, some vendors do not even care about the security of their cloud storage, not to mention the client side. And it seems that the story with colossal leaks in Salesforce is not the last trouble in the protection of corporate information. Therefore, work with reliable vendors, do not forget to log events in the system and make backups.
In the case of a cyber attack, knock out the glass, pull out the cord
Integration with online chat rooms, telephony services, virtual PBX will allow businesses to earn more. Online chat rooms and telephony are actively developing, offering new convenient products and their interaction with CRM systems gives new scope for studying the next customer requirements and a new round of functionality. But integration with social networks will not advance anywhere, because there is an imbalance in this area: a small (micro) business that works for B2C through social networks is not particularly ready to work closely with CRM, and B2B has begun to understand that merging advertising budgets into social networks not the best idea, and therefore there will be no new requirements for the integration. Well, big business has its own methods and tools for working with young people :-)
This is a consequence of various integrations. The sphere of CRM-systems has yet to solve the issues of stability of the entire bundle, for example CRM itself, online chat and telephony. These are three different suppliers, therefore, failures in any of the components are possible, and the impression of all three will be spoiled. In serious services, SLA formally guarantees 99.9% availability, but it is better to learn how to prevent such problems.
We really do not like this trend, but it is there, and 2-3 companies are not able to reverse it. Users strive for simple CRM-systems that seem to them convenient and easy to implement. However, corporate software is not the software, in which the main thing is few elements and beautiful buttons. In systems of this class, it is important to combine discreet working design and functionality, when everything is at hand, all entities are connected. Alas, it is difficult to convey to users, because they often choose what is perceived immediately and does not require deep immersion.
Business advice: do not choose a CRM system by interface, price or vendor logo. The rule of compliance with the requirements of your company and the functionality of CRM has not been canceled, and this is the only right way to choose a CRM system. And then the checkers will remain, but it will not work.
This is not a bigdat, of course, but a minimal set of adequate data in order to build productive relationships with clients. More and more companies are trying to find out where the client came from, how he lives, what he buys, etc. Such analytics should be aggregated in CRM systems. Omni-channel analytics are increasingly interesting for companies. This is partly due to the fact that most of the pre-sale relationships went online and, if you do not measure, who came from, what you looked like, called, etc., there is a feeling of an information vacuum. Therefore, in order to contact users and advertising campaigns on the Internet, a business must know everything about the structure of clients, their needs, etc.
All this information is optimally stored in the CRM system. Thus, it will turn out to be a universal repository of information about clients, transactions, assortment, business processes, etc., and in this complex information array you can safely get insights for further development. Not knowing any business performance indicators, other than revenue, is not just inconsistent, it’s criminal.
According to analytical reports of several bureaus in 2008, 88% of CRM worked on client servers. Today, 87% of CRM hosts are in the cloud. This trend will continue in 2019. Everything is cool, BUT! This is a small statistical trick. In 2008, there were few vendors, and all of them (who survived) at the moment saved the server model along with the cloud, because we are well aware that medium and large businesses value their commercial data too much to keep them in the cloud. RegionSoft CRM entered the market just in 2007, we perfectly remember the competitive alignment of those years.
Now even we will not be able to list all the Russian CRM systems for you, because there are hundreds of them. "Cloud CRM" is now called everything that is not laziness - from software notebooks to complex ERP-solutions, simply because CRM is a word known to many. Moreover, the CRM development market began to develop thanks to simple web and cloud solutions. So it is not surprising that the share of desktop solutions is so dissolved within this mass.
Clouds are no longer a trend, this is yet another enterprise software deployment technology. Hysteria is over, everyone will have to strain to find new competitive advantages. Although the secret lies on the surface: the best detuning is powerful demanded functionality.
It has been standing for a long time, but somehow everyone gets around it. How ethical is it to collect and use detailed data, such as health or training? Where is the border of personal and personal data? How can a person protect against unwanted information? How can this be broadcast to those who are not aware of information security? The problem is that data is collected by different companies, which in fact are not data storage operators. In the end, it all comes down to how it happened with cellular phones: you are connected to a melody instead of a beep, a bunch of content, services, caller ID, anti-caller ID, and then declare “Everything was in agreement, the subscriber was to blame for not disconnecting all this in his personal account. No operator has stolen a penny - all because of the stupidity of the subscriber. " So with the data - the majority of users will transfer them without even knowing it.
This, of course, is most likely not a problem of CRM-systems and not their vendors, but of those who will collect data, but the question in the IT field has stood and will stand. You can not close his eyes to him.
This is not so much our prediction, as our desire and objective necessity. The crisis should cease to be a reason to sit on the money, you can’t sit a lot out of them. This is a good period for reviewing business processes and streamlining activities. We are not talking about abbreviations - this way comes from almost feudal times, why do you need it? We are talking about working with business processes and automation - by shifting part of the routine to the program and to the strict logic of the schemes, you will free employees for quality work with each client. Because the tasks that only people can solve will always be, and more often they will relate to the “person-to-person” system.
To predict what the economy will give us in 2019 is a thankless task, it is too far from the laws of economic development. But you can adapt, you can use every moment to your advantage, learn to look for opportunities and earn more. The main thing is not to sit still. Movement is life, and in business, too.
Good luck to you a new business year!
Let's pour ourselves some tea or coffee and read what CRM is waiting for in the world in the coming year, and at the same time we estimate what CRM is waiting for in Russia. Mostly even exciting! Fallout 4. Well, for some coffee?
First, let's try to understand why there are so few analysts and forecasts in Russia? First, most of the trends are generated by the global giants Salesforce, Oracle and SAP. They represent the sum of clusters of developers, research centers, purchased startups, etc. These companies in their volume are not comparable with any developer of CRM and ERP-systems in Russia. Secondly, CRM in Russia is still a luxury for small and medium businesses and bluff for large. There are few companies that implement CRM to work calmly and effectively. Our business automation is a very special market, with its own rules and customer needs. And it is very different from the west. Third, the Russian business has not yet formed the prerequisites for a need, for example, in artificial intelligence (AI) or on the Internet of things (IoT).
Whether abroad, in Europe, or in the USA, is the cult of business efficiency and the long-established cult of automation. CRM-system for them is an interesting and useful tool with which you can earn more. For example, according to the IDC report, AI related to CRM activities will increase global business revenue by $ 1.1 trillion by the end of 2021. And how much will it increase in Russia? We do not know. But we in RegionSoft Developer Studio, like no one, know that there is a steady growth in demand for CRM systems, a business is beginning to understand the value of automation as an investment object and as a tool. It is especially pleasant to observe this trend in an average, small and micro business.
However, first things first.
Trend number 1. Artificial Intelligence
Experts evaluate AI as a relief for routine manual tasks, such as scoring leads, entering some data and even calling customers (not informational, but in the form of a dialogue). Thus, employees will be able to devote almost all of their working time to customer service, focusing on consulting tasks. In fact, each client, regardless of status and category, will receive his personal manager. The work of artificial intelligence to increase sales is associated with the use of blockchain, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP).
In principle, the beginnings of artificial intelligence have long been used in chat bots and scoring systems, some CRM have gone deeper and use entire platforms (for example, Einstein Salesforce, IBM Watson, etc.). However, in order for such AI elements to work for you in a company, you need to train this intelligence on data, and this is big, very big data. For example, scoring deals. Imagine that you have 5000 transactions in the database - this is quite a lot for small and medium businesses, but it is extremely small that the AI, based on the input data, correctly estimates the probability and outcome of the transaction. So far, artificial intelligence in most systems (including Russian) is just marketing based on following the Gauss distribution. Well, and all the more so, an adequate business conversation between a robot and a human being is impossible, too many nuances and surprises.do not add optimism .
All these people are sick today. They call it a flu epidemic.
Trend number 2. Big data and their processing (Big Data and Data Mining)
This trend for many years. A business should accumulate big data in a CRM system or software integrated with it, and then correctly process and interpret them. And then data mining begins - a process that uses mathematical, statistical and machine learning methods to extract knowledge and other useful information for later decision making. Experts say that companies have previously collected data, but failed to process them, but now, with artificial intelligence, the data will be obtained efficiently and will benefit all parties: business and customers. Data sources: gadgets, wearable electronics, social networks, sensors, etc.
Indeed, in the history of business automation there were many approaches to data analysis. The most notable of them is the era of OLAP, when aggregated information (slices) was issued on the basis of data arrays. These were (and are) huge complex analytical systems, with long processing of information, sensitive to the quality of data. In Russia, they turned out to be in demand only in very large companies or in a business with active data generation (telecom operators, retail, HoReCa). One of the coolest examples of software with OLAP capabilities onboard is CBOSS.
At the same time, it was time for dashboards - informative graphs, histograms and other ways of graphically displaying the main indicators on one page or in one window. Many CRM-systems of the past (and the present) have excelled in creating dashboards. By the way, we haveRegionSoft CRM never had them - not that we are visionaries and foresaw that in 2019 dashboards will be an atavism, no. But we, as users of a CRM system and as a business, understood that all this beauty takes a development resource, but it is not very informative. Regular tabular reports and selections using filters are much more useful and relevant. Actually, if you refer to GitHub reports, ratings, etc., you will see that the table view of the data prevails.
Now the era of big data, you can not argue here - each of us daily generates a bunch of information that our electronic devices and devices aggregate at cash registers, tags at the entrance to the store and so on. For access to this data, the business will be happy to sell the soul, because it is the guarantor of the most accurate target for advertising, which means a high probability of purchase. But here there is a mass of technological and legal issues - how to collect, to whom to sell, where to store, etc.
Yes, data is the future, but this is not for every business. It seems that the information will be difficult and expensive. As expensive as processing facilities and computing power and high-end analytics for interpretation. In the Russian small and medium businesses, only a few companies have come to such approaches in working with data, otherwise everything is rather prosaic.
Trend number 3. CRM voice assistants
Pure marketing trend. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have generated a huge number of ideas for use: from households to security systems. In Russia, Alice is actively conquering the IT world, for which skills are written that are already applicable to business problems.
It is assumed that the integration of CRM-systems with voice assistants will enable dictation and quick access to information using voice commands. Well, that is, the sales manager is sitting and saying: “Alice, call LLC“ Horns and hoofs ”, something like this.
Beautiful move, the feeling of tomorrow. But it is not clear how to apply it within CRM systems. Dictation is still imperfect: the system can record incorrect data, and this is a series of errors in documents, letters, processes and long-long correction. Voice control of the interface is also a dubious story: extra noise in the office, recognition errors, more entertainment than business. We see more the use of voice assistants in retail, medical care, transportation, etc. In CRM, this if there will be, it is solely as a “price tag”.
- Alex, tell me the new status of major incident number 255?
- Oh, better sit down before you hear it.
Trend number 4. Hyper personalization of customer relations
Data needs to be collected not only big, but also correct - in this way you can find out everything about the client and sell exactly what he wants. Experts believe that by doing so they do great things and deserve exceptional customer loyalty. In fact, abroad it is. One Russian company operating in the B2C sector throughout Europe and America sent out on national holidays and for an experiment on birthdays. These days a lot of answers came from the category: “So cute, so amazing! Think about me! Nice! ”(And conversion after).
In Russia, the audience reacts more hard to such personal invasions. In B2B sphere, excessive personalization can generally lead to paranoia and suspicion of espionage. Therefore, it is better to avoid hyper personalization through a CRM system and know the measure, so as not to harm your own reputation.
Trend number 5. The popularity of mobile CRM
Experts predict an increase in the use of mobile CRM-systems. This is already a stray trend from 2010-2012 at least. Its main message sounds like real-time access anytime, anywhere. A good message, we even deliver a mobile version of our CRM on demand for it. But how many of those involved in business on the screen of a mobile phone? Look at the screen time in the mobile - do you have a lot of business applications there? Here is the screen of one of our busy employees - as you can see on the first lines of purely personal questions:
Mobile CRM as a working tool has the right to life, but, of course, it cannot be a trend - only a matter of inquiry of each company. Yes, for corporate chats, a mobile phone is a pretty thing, and for active work in automation systems it’s a dubious thing.
Trend number 6. Growth in demand for open source solutions
Experts and analysts point out that open source CRM is also steadily growing in popularity. More and more users prefer to use open source solutions for customization and implementation in the company.
Yes, the growing interest in open source is a global trend, and it is not bad. The bad thing is that many users do not understand that open-source is not equal to “free” or “freebie”, but contains big expenses. In order for free software to work as a full-fledged element of the IT infrastructure, you need to hire a developer with appropriate skills and experience (about 100–120 thousand rubles a month at least), purchase a development environment (the price is different), conduct a full analysis companies, take into account that support for open-source vendors is quite expensive (this is a significant part of their income), etc. Therefore, it is not as free as many believe.
Trend number 7. CRM + IoT = advertising will find you everywhere
Analysts see IoT in CRM as the future of customer service, sales promotion, improved service, and increased loyalty (the very hyper personalization). The Internet of Things is designed to provide business with maximum information about customers, as well as provide an opportunity to remotely fix problems by learning about them using sensors as quickly as possible. Thus, it will be an automation, capable not only of a point-like effect on events around a client, but also capable of preempting some kind of trouble. In conjunction with the CRM can get a really powerful solution.
IoT + CRM in words looks attractive, and there are already examples of successful use of this bundle, BUT! Unfortunately, for the time being everything rests on the task of broadcasting advertising as close to the user as possible. And any advertising, even the most technological, quickly begins to annoy. I would like to see this trend in the key of the service and solving customer problems.
Actually, these are seven basic predictions in the field of CRM for 2019, which we managed to crystallize. The numbers are also impressive. According to foreign statistics, the use of CRM increased from 56% to 74%. Detailing shows that 91% of enterprises with more than 11 employees currently use CRM, compared with 50% of them with 10 employees or less. CRM gives a visible result. The Forrester study notes that 50% of teams using CRM reported improved performance, and respondents saw a total reduction in labor costs by 20%. And if the values of productivity in Russia may be the same, the level of implementation of CRM in a company with a small number of employees is much lower. I would like to believe that it is somewhere at the level of 40-50% (as our polls on Habré show), but it feels lower.
Well, let this beautiful and optimistic infographics complete the discussion of foreign trends.
CRM 2019 in Russia
Trends according to the regionSoft CRM development team
Security will remain a problem
There is no absolutely safe CRM system - neither cloudy nor server. And in CRM is stored a critical asset - customer base and commercial information. Vendors are still faced with the problem of ensuring complete security of information in the system: from force majeure, unscrupulous employees, competitors, hackers, etc. However, some vendors do not even care about the security of their cloud storage, not to mention the client side. And it seems that the story with colossal leaks in Salesforce is not the last trouble in the protection of corporate information. Therefore, work with reliable vendors, do not forget to log events in the system and make backups.
In the case of a cyber attack, knock out the glass, pull out the cord
Interesting integrations will move software forward.
Integration with online chat rooms, telephony services, virtual PBX will allow businesses to earn more. Online chat rooms and telephony are actively developing, offering new convenient products and their interaction with CRM systems gives new scope for studying the next customer requirements and a new round of functionality. But integration with social networks will not advance anywhere, because there is an imbalance in this area: a small (micro) business that works for B2C through social networks is not particularly ready to work closely with CRM, and B2B has begun to understand that merging advertising budgets into social networks not the best idea, and therefore there will be no new requirements for the integration. Well, big business has its own methods and tools for working with young people :-)
Danger in setting up on multiple platforms
This is a consequence of various integrations. The sphere of CRM-systems has yet to solve the issues of stability of the entire bundle, for example CRM itself, online chat and telephony. These are three different suppliers, therefore, failures in any of the components are possible, and the impression of all three will be spoiled. In serious services, SLA formally guarantees 99.9% availability, but it is better to learn how to prevent such problems.
The degree of acceptance of CRM will depend on the simplicity
We really do not like this trend, but it is there, and 2-3 companies are not able to reverse it. Users strive for simple CRM-systems that seem to them convenient and easy to implement. However, corporate software is not the software, in which the main thing is few elements and beautiful buttons. In systems of this class, it is important to combine discreet working design and functionality, when everything is at hand, all entities are connected. Alas, it is difficult to convey to users, because they often choose what is perceived immediately and does not require deep immersion.
Business advice: do not choose a CRM system by interface, price or vendor logo. The rule of compliance with the requirements of your company and the functionality of CRM has not been canceled, and this is the only right way to choose a CRM system. And then the checkers will remain, but it will not work.
Interest in data analysis will grow
This is not a bigdat, of course, but a minimal set of adequate data in order to build productive relationships with clients. More and more companies are trying to find out where the client came from, how he lives, what he buys, etc. Such analytics should be aggregated in CRM systems. Omni-channel analytics are increasingly interesting for companies. This is partly due to the fact that most of the pre-sale relationships went online and, if you do not measure, who came from, what you looked like, called, etc., there is a feeling of an information vacuum. Therefore, in order to contact users and advertising campaigns on the Internet, a business must know everything about the structure of clients, their needs, etc.
All this information is optimally stored in the CRM system. Thus, it will turn out to be a universal repository of information about clients, transactions, assortment, business processes, etc., and in this complex information array you can safely get insights for further development. Not knowing any business performance indicators, other than revenue, is not just inconsistent, it’s criminal.
Cloud psychosis over
According to analytical reports of several bureaus in 2008, 88% of CRM worked on client servers. Today, 87% of CRM hosts are in the cloud. This trend will continue in 2019. Everything is cool, BUT! This is a small statistical trick. In 2008, there were few vendors, and all of them (who survived) at the moment saved the server model along with the cloud, because we are well aware that medium and large businesses value their commercial data too much to keep them in the cloud. RegionSoft CRM entered the market just in 2007, we perfectly remember the competitive alignment of those years.
Now even we will not be able to list all the Russian CRM systems for you, because there are hundreds of them. "Cloud CRM" is now called everything that is not laziness - from software notebooks to complex ERP-solutions, simply because CRM is a word known to many. Moreover, the CRM development market began to develop thanks to simple web and cloud solutions. So it is not surprising that the share of desktop solutions is so dissolved within this mass.
Clouds are no longer a trend, this is yet another enterprise software deployment technology. Hysteria is over, everyone will have to strain to find new competitive advantages. Although the secret lies on the surface: the best detuning is powerful demanded functionality.
CRM systems and strategies will face ethics
It has been standing for a long time, but somehow everyone gets around it. How ethical is it to collect and use detailed data, such as health or training? Where is the border of personal and personal data? How can a person protect against unwanted information? How can this be broadcast to those who are not aware of information security? The problem is that data is collected by different companies, which in fact are not data storage operators. In the end, it all comes down to how it happened with cellular phones: you are connected to a melody instead of a beep, a bunch of content, services, caller ID, anti-caller ID, and then declare “Everything was in agreement, the subscriber was to blame for not disconnecting all this in his personal account. No operator has stolen a penny - all because of the stupidity of the subscriber. " So with the data - the majority of users will transfer them without even knowing it.
This, of course, is most likely not a problem of CRM-systems and not their vendors, but of those who will collect data, but the question in the IT field has stood and will stand. You can not close his eyes to him.
Business will reconsider the perception of the crisis
This is not so much our prediction, as our desire and objective necessity. The crisis should cease to be a reason to sit on the money, you can’t sit a lot out of them. This is a good period for reviewing business processes and streamlining activities. We are not talking about abbreviations - this way comes from almost feudal times, why do you need it? We are talking about working with business processes and automation - by shifting part of the routine to the program and to the strict logic of the schemes, you will free employees for quality work with each client. Because the tasks that only people can solve will always be, and more often they will relate to the “person-to-person” system.
To predict what the economy will give us in 2019 is a thankless task, it is too far from the laws of economic development. But you can adapt, you can use every moment to your advantage, learn to look for opportunities and earn more. The main thing is not to sit still. Movement is life, and in business, too.
Good luck to you a new business year!
In December, we had a time for discounts, but we know what the end of the year is in business: reports, KPI, awards, first results, congratulations and corporate events. This is a fuss, inside which it is easy to forget about the most important thing - the development of your own business. But there is still time before the spring spike in business activity. Time forward!
As part of the “Time Forward” action, which will be valid from January 21 to January 31, 2019, we offer a 10% discount on the purchase of any solutions made by RegionSoft . Write, call, we are ready to tell and show.