What is the future of CRM analytics? What upcoming problems might exist? What aspects might be in decline?

 

Source: (Playbuzz.com, 2016)

So what is the future of CRM?

In the past, the meaning of CRM for everyone was sales force automation only. Then, as things were moving forward, marketing automation was added to that functionality. All that wasn’t there was actually social channel incorporation only.

Before we speak about the future, let’s take a look at what we have in hand right now.

At the moment, CRM is mostly focused on internal business management practices such as customer information management, market strategy design (based on sales) and basic customer related communications. They are designed to increase process efficiency and reduce operational cost by analyzing sales and in turn influencing business operations. But somehow, organizations still fail to inspire customers enough to improve and retain relationships. With social media advancements, a communication evolution followed. This communication evolution is going to lead us to the future.

In the future, with social CRM will help organizations be better customer oriented. The future goal of CRM will be to improve communication between an organization and its customers. It will be an application to know and explore consumer needs. In a recent case study sponsored by SAP on six innovative companies, namely e de Transport de Montreal, Lenovo, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, ARI, coop@home and CEMEX, studies revealed that “Businesses need to provide an unbroken and highly relevant conversation across channels, responding to and even anticipating customers’ ever- evolving needs. In today’s terms, this is known as ‘customer engagement’.” (SAP, 2015) This shows a changing trend in needs of the customers. Better customer engagement will also help build tailored strategies that each customer would desire. Speaking of customer engagement, it is exactly where CRM is headed towards.

In terms of data science, the biggest difference will be changes in research objectives. Instead of concentrating just on sales data, consumer behavior and engagement will be the new areas of concentration. For example, a future CRM system would be able to discover customer demands based on onsite behavior or targeted personalized recommendations and promotions.

 

Source: (act-on.com, 2016)

Upcoming Challenges to CRM and data science

The future will challenge data science for better or for worse in two major ways being, data and technologies.

Scalability

Scalability will continue to challenge data analysts. With more customer interaction, data volumes are at an all-time high and will still continue to increase. Although, CRM has transferred from sales driven to a customer centric model, strong data analysis plays important role to provide insights about customers. “During the next eight years, the amount of digital data produced will exceed 40 zettabytes, which is the equivalent of 5,200 GB of data for every man, woman and child on Earth, according to an updated Digital Universe study released today.” (Mearian, 2012)

Technology

The technological challenges that exist in data science will hinder CRM transition as well, especially dealing with poor quality data. Large and noisy datasets will definitely add to difficulties. Also, having an omni-channel platform presence definitely helps organizations engage with their consumers but it adds to difficulties in managing consumer data and getting better insights from it.

All in all, if we think about what might be in decline when talking about the future of CRM and data science, then the first and last thing that comes to mind is non-customer oriented traditional practices. This is because, all the decisions that CRM will help aid stakeholders in making can be data driven and concrete. 

Interesting reads for the literary inclined geeks and references

• Cdn.playbuzz.com. (2016). Playbuzz.com. [online] Available at: http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/c9c1b883-9a63-4467-8830-b083f322b786/b1853fe9-7972-4fff-8740-dfb8ea7c3213_560_420.jpg [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].
• Evergage. (2014). The CRM of the Future: Data Curation and Predictive Analytics. [online] Available at: http://www.evergage.com/blog/crm-future-data-curation-and-predictive-analytics/ [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].
• Forbes.com. (2015). Forbes Insights: Customer Engagement. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/sap_customer_engagement/index.html [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].
• Act-on.com. (2015). [online] Available at: https://www.act-on.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Customer-Engagement.jpg [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].
• French, T., LaBerge, L. and Magill, P. (2011). We’re all marketers now. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/were-all-marketers-now [Accessed 12 Jun. 2016].
• Mearian, L. (2012). By 2020, there will be 5,200 GB of data for every person on Earth. [online] Computerworld. Available at: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2493701/data-center/by-2020--there-will-be-5-200-gb-of-data-for-every-person-on-earth.html [Accessed 12 Jun. 2016].
• Schaeffer, C. (2016). The Future of CRM Software. [online] Crmsearch.com. Available at: http://www.crmsearch.com/future-of-crm.php [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].