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Customer relationship management is key IT priority for 2012
FMCG SUPPLIER NEWS
ProcurementLeaders.com - May 4th 2012, 09:25
CIOs ranked customer relationship management (CRM) as their number eight technology priority for 2012, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner.
CRM was found to have moved up from the number 18-ranked technology in 2011.
Additionally, Gartner’s 2012 CEO poll found that CEOs cited CRM as their most important area of investment to improve their business over the next five years.
“The focus on the customer is increasingly important for business leaders, despite times of continued economic uncertainty and government austerity,” said Jim Davies, research director at Gartner.
“Effective leaders use technology to strengthen the customer experience regardless of the economic environment, and they see customers as the key factor in helping their business deliver growth and operational efficiency in 2012. They also understand that a new strategy is needed to embrace social and media trends.”
“In 2012, CRM executives are faced with the challenge of taking ‘social’ more seriously — not as ‘just another channel,’ but as a whole new way of doing business,” added Ed Thompson, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
The research company predicts that by 2014, refusing to communicate with customers via social channels will be as harmful to the relationship as ignoring their emails or phone calls is today.
“Our discussions with service providers and end users indicate that CRM services are shifting from a focus on point solution deployment centred on application suites, to a ‘customer experience’ that brings together customer information, analytics, workflows, mobility and social CRM disciplines into a richer, multichannel access to capture the entire customer journey,” Thompson said.
Gartner said worldwide CRM software revenue reached $12bn in 2011, a 13.5% increase from 2010, and it is forecast to grow 7% in 2012.
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