A guide to tech trends that drive CRM development

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is by no means an isolated industry. Of course, it continues to surge in popularity, as 2020 CRM statistics show, and it does so on its own merits.  However, as with all technological innovations, it’s closely intertwined with emerging tech trends. From AI to blockchain advancements and more, CRM adapts, evolves, and innovates. Thus, here at MoversTech, we’ve created a guide to tech trends that drive CRM development, for your reading convenience.

Which tech trends drive CRM development?

To answer this fundamental question, one would first need to consider what CRM is designed to do. In essence, CRM software provides a consolidated customer database. From that core functionality, it expands to provide the following:

• Lead management, lead scoring, and marketing optimization
• Interaction history for improved customer support
• Operational automation and workflow optimization

This list might be a simplified summary of what CRM can offer, but it does provide a proper context for our subject. As CRM strives to improve to better fulfill these key roles, related tech trends can drive CRM development. Among many, 3 key tech trends can offer CRM substantial benefits.

Artificial Intelligence

This technology once bordered on science fiction, but now finds itself in many tech industries. Through machine learning and its immense analytical powers, it augments marketing content creation, customer support, and more. Simply considering how it can power analytical CRMs’ predictive modeling functions is enough to drive innovation, but the possibilities are endless. Consider chatbots for enhanced customer support, natural language processing (NLP) for marketing content, and so much more. CRM solutions are already beginning to tap into AI for this exact reason.

Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data integration

Similarly, futuristic concepts, Big Data, and IoT have already started to become commonplace and necessary. The amount of data that we create every year is staggering – Forbes predicted we’ll be creating 175 zettabytes of data annually by 2025. CRM gathers very notable amounts of data as well, and IoT presents more opportunities for data collection – and challenges. Such massive troves of information are prone to duplication, redundancy, and more. When data becomes too much for humans to effectively process, Big Data and IoT are more than tech trends that drive CRM development; they’re necessary.

Blockchain

Finally, as businesses incorporate CRM as such a central piece of their operations, security becomes increasingly vital. For all of CRM’s security features, the pursuit of safety is endless. The decentralized, interlinked records blockchain offers come as an essential innovation toward security while maintaining transparency and user control. While other tech trends drive CRM development, blockchain offers an additional safeguard against malicious actors. And considering how much damage to such systems is now possible in the digital age, one could even argue it’s a necessity.

Tech trends and CRM development, present and future

Having established the contexts for this guide, then, let us elaborate more on each individual tech trend that drives CRM development.

Tech trend #1: personalization, lead management, and “customer first”

One of the most prevalent tech trends today sees personalization and customer support take the lead. CRM is, by design, invested in these areas, and AI can find many profitable uses.

Predictive modeling and lead management

While predictive modeling is usually a feature of analytical CRM, it remains valuable and, for many, essential. Similarly, lead management is core functionality that very few would refuse.

On both fronts, AI can enhance CRM and incite innovation. AI can provide better data analysis capabilities, which can enhance the likelihood of successful sales – what lead management intends to do. By personalizing each lead, a business can better gauge the likelihood of success of different marketing approaches. Sales teams could better assess when the proper time for a follow-up arises, or when a lead should be discarded.

Customer support

By the same token, AI’s potential benefits to customer support are already visible in chatbots. Chatbots are being used by business juggernauts like Coca-Cola, and offer an efficient alternative to human staff. They can provide support to multiple clients at once, across different timezones, and without rest. At the same time, they can act as filters for inquiries before they notify proper representatives, and machine learning ensures they constantly improve after every interaction.

Tech trend #2:  data integration, IoT, and automation

As stressed above, troves of data and IoT advances offer new heights for business. At the same time, automation becomes imperative, and so does data integration. In this regard, big data and third-party system integration both drive CRM development.

IoT and Big Data

To avoid repeating previous points, data collection always welcomes optimization. CRMs collect troves of data, and IoT trends can drive them further. Consider how many interconnected devices can produce actionable data for CRM to collect and analyze. But to do so effectively, Big Data needs to ensure proper data analysis beyond human limits, which it now achieves.

Integration and automation

Similarly, all such data sources need to ensure proper integration, to then power effective process automation. In this regard, CRM already boasts tremendous integration capabilities with third-party software solutions. As cloud-based technologies and communication protocols advance, so too will integration towards more efficient automation.

Tech trend #3: security

Finally, security is no trend in any traditional sense. However, given the size and scope of tech trends that drive CRM development, security becomes a concern more relevant than ever.

Blockchain: transparency and user control

While blockchain would require its own article to truly do it justice, it still offers immense new possibilities for security. CRM handles valuable, confidential information, and blockchain’s very structure and nature can augment its security further:

• Decentralized – no third-party brokers
• Peer-to-peer – network access keys
• User control – limits to shared data
• Clean data – fewer data errors through constant confirmation

While only time will tell, blockchain does indeed represent the potential next step in security for all parties involved.

Conclusion

With all of the above in mind, it should now be evident that tech trends do drive CRM development. From optimization to security, the digital age offers moving company CRM solutions amazing new frontiers to conquer, and technological innovations will only strengthen one another over time.