By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Your customer relationship management system is important to not only your sales workflow, but also enhancing customer intelligence. Maybe you have already seen significant CRM ROI or are just on the verge of a CRM investment. Either way, CRM software has exploded in use across the globe. According to recent research, the business community is estimated to not only continue moving toward CRM systems, but the technology may overtake other types of software solutions. The market value of CRM could more than double by 2017.
CRM Will See Market Boosts
Gartner's latest forecast, "Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2012-2017, 2Q13 Update," found CRM systems, business intelligence (BI) and analytics applications had a total market revenue of $13.1 billion in 2012. The number is a 6.8 percent increase when compared to 2011's revenue of $12.3 billion. Gartner estimated that this total growth will not only continue in the next five years, but CRM will lead the way with the most segmented gains of all enterprise software categories.
According to Forbes, the study highlighted how CRM will continue to surpass previous expectations, as it accelerates in value faster from quarter to quarter. Experts seem to be constantly changing their estimates as the CRM market seems to perpetually expand. By 2017, CRM is projected to hold approximately $36.5 billion in revenue. With 2013 at about $20.7 billion, in five years CRM will almost double in revenue. In 2016, Gartner estimated CRM will eclipse even enterprise resource planning in value. Dan Sommer, principal research analyst at Gartner, said numerous enterprise software systems, such as BI, will continue to make strides well into the future.
The value of CRM and BI software in the global marketplace is set to remain solid in the long term. As more corporations begin to understand the essential need of building and managing client relationships, enterprise software will provide ROI into the future.
ROI? It Might Be Subjective
But seeing ROI of your CRM investment relies not on simply having the software, but knowing how to use it. According to News Factor, an IT resource, the power of CRM tools lies in how you implement the knowledge you gained from the software. While sales reps need to be able to glean market insights quickly and easily through customer analytics, they also should be able to employ and manage that intelligence in the real world.
According to the Corporate Executive Board, monitoring your CRM system's ROI is a complex process that involves more than just looking at the finances – it incorporates informal aspects as well. So how do you do this? CEB suggested that CRM ROI only happens through high levels of adoption. That means everyone needs to get on board with using your CRM. It may get easier to track your customer insights and get a better picture of your CRM investment as the market expands – it just might be a subjective view.
Seeing a return for implementing CRM into your sales team can be difficult, but as the technology advances and more enterprises get on board, it may get a bit easier. Driving ROI relies on building customer relationships and really understanding what they need to be successful. CRM helps you to manage that – just make sure you completely adopt the system.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Big data is a big topic these days. With more companies jumping on the business intelligence bandwagon, one common misconception is you can't integrate big data analytics into your business monitoring system. Now, more sales professionals may have become aware of data analytics in the past year, but that does not mean it is an entirely new development and is incompatible with CRM systems. In fact, placing data into your tracking software is exactly what you want to do. Investing in BI and market intelligence go hand in hand, and big data is a critical component of each. Being able to extract usable information from the data pile is a great way for sales and marketing reps to ensure they drive business and, in turn, revenue.
The Epic Confusion Over Big Data
Many sales professionals understand the importance of customer and business intelligence, and know analytics is part of how it all works together. Yet many reps continue to misunderstand how important big data really is to their success. Some are even unsure if they really need it. And with the infinite amount of intelligence out there, you need it, because you just cannot possibly get through all of the information without some help.
Adam Binnie, global vice president for SAP, told Forbes the process of sifting through all of the collected intelligence is a means to an end for optimizing your investment.
"While we talk a lot about the data and the impact of that data, at the end of the day […] analytics is about giving people information so that those people can have an impact on the success of an organization," he said.
In a recent article for Business News Daily, Elizabeth Palermo broke down how big data helps professionals sort through the vast amounts of accumulated insights. Palermo, a technology professional, said most software involves three data tools: extraction, architecture and query development. These basic features are there for a reason – they select only certain parts of the data pool and bring them to your attention, then, many times, the data can be stored for future use. It's wonderfully efficient.
But much of the confusion results from how messy big data can get when you don't have the right tools to figure out what you actually need. In his blog for TechRepublic, Toby Wolpe said this is where one of big data's big myths came into existence. Analytics become easier to decipher if you have the right BI platform. Wolpe also advised professionals to remember that when you have a great customer and business intelligence tool, using big data is easy.
And many agree with him, including Paul O'Leary, CTO for BI firm Quantivo, who told Forbes all of the mess results from not using an appropriate platform to get the proper information.
"The big challenge in big data visualization is going from lots of raw data and turning it into a form where you've done the calculations," O'Leary said. "It becomes very easy to visualize once you've done the heavy lifting."
When you have a system that can do that heavy lifting for you, you're most of the way there. The right platform should give you context to the data, be able to give you information right as it's happening and give you everything your customers need to be successful. Investing in the right tool can make a world of difference when industries like sales and marketing change every day.
