Archive for category: News

The future of customer relationship management (CRM) seems to be left in the helms of another technology of today: Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has been talked about for a very long time and today it’s proved to be the game changer it truly is. Peter Kowalke at IT.ToolBox notes that the inclusion of AI in CRM systems is projected to deliver businesses roughly $394 billion in additional revenue in the United States by 2021, according to Statistica research. Not every CRM currently flows through AI, and while most do, it’s very likely they all eventually will. Below are 6 CRM trends to watch in the near future, with excerpts directly from Kowalke’s article on IT.Toolbox.com:

1. Automatic Automation – “AI and Machine learning capabilities have significantly evolved during the past few years, and AI can enhance CRM utilization thanks to automating mundane tasks that employees would otherwise waste time on,” says Katherine Kostereva, CEO and founder of CRM maker, bpm’online.
2. Voice-Based Access – “The integration of voice assistants into CRM systems will allow for dictation and fast access to data with the help of voice commands,” notes Illia Pinchuk, CEO of software development firm, Diceus.
3. Advanced Data Mining – “Today, with AI-based technology, big data can bring customer relations to a new level using different electronic devices, gadgets, wearables, social networks, etc.,” says Pinchuk.
4. Tighter Integration with Other Systems – “CRM has forgotten the ‘relationship’ part of its acronym, and has failed to adapt to businesses’ evolving needs and the modern workplace,” says Morgan Norman, chief marketing officer for Google-based CRM, Copper. “A major weakness of traditional CRM systems is that they aren’t integrated with digital workplace tools users prefer, like Slack and G Suite.” This is changing, however, as CRM makers such as Salesforce and others break CRM out of its silo and build around the cloud model where everything easily connects with everything else.
5. Social Media-Inspired User Interfaces – “Based on user experience preferences and design, the next evolution of CRM may resemble a social network or consumer-facing application so that users feel comfortable with its functionalities,” suggests Norman.
6. IoT Data – “IoT will connect with CRM significantly in the near future, particularly in service organizations,” says Robin Grochol, vice president of product management for the Salesforce Sales Cloud. “With IoT and CRM data integrated, customer service agents can provide better support to customers and provide a consistent and personalized experience.”

 

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Customer relationship management and marketing is continuously evolving and becoming more and more imperative to the way we do business. Brands today are focusing a lot of their time on customer data and ways to leverage customer relationships. They are constantly finding ways to engaging with customers through people-based marketing strategies. Marketing strategist Jose Cebrian recently surveyed 200 marketers on this subject.

Marketers are Seeking to Invest More in Data, Analytics, and Technology

Cebrian explains that “marketers are feeling more pressure to enhance the customer experience and deliver differentiation throughout the full life cycle from prospect to customer to loyalty and win-back. They need investment to deliver on the promise of modern CRM, which is to ingest and analyze data, surface insights, and serve decisions to the systems that need them, whether it be a mobile app, an email campaign, a call center, or even an ATM.”

 

Email Remains a Valued Channel for Personalization and Insights

“Commercial email has been around for many years; email platforms are fairly mature, as are the operational processes around them. The channel is inherently –data driven, and the relatively large format allows for personalization in many different areas, including subject lines, imagery, content blocks, and other pieces. But that may contribute to the problem. Low levels of personalization are pretty easy in email, but it allows people to “check a box” that they are personalizing. But it has to mean more. If we continue on the theme of modern CRM, email personalization should not be considered something as basic as inserting a name or loyalty balance into a merge tag – that’s JV personalization. Rather, it has to be powered by insights and impact not just the content people see in their email, but also when they receive an email, the imagery they see, the language they read, and the offers they see – and even whether they receive an email at all. In addition, we need to connect that logic with other media in channel-appropriate ways.”

 

Direct Mail is on the Decline. Can We Do More with Less?

“As a channel, direct mail still has an important seat at the table – it’s a great acquisition channel for some industries, including financial services, home services, nonprofit, and retail. And the laws surrounding direct mail in the US are simpler than other PII-based marketing tactics. But the reality is that direct mail is relatively expensive on a per-piece basis, so you have to know who you are targeting, why, what you are going to say, and what you expect the outcome to be. While those tenets should be true in any channel, the economics of direct mail enforce the discipline. So, like all channels and tactics, direct mail has its place in the marketing quiver for acquisition, renewal, and continuity programs. But also, like other channels, you shouldn’t use direct mail to target everyone on your list. Start with the audience. Understand the channels through which they respond and use those in a coordinated fashion.”

 

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With 5G disrupting today’s mobile network platform and providing widespread global coverage, Erik Ekudden at Ericsson.com believes that this network platform is the gateway to greater innovative trends in the near future. With 5G’s predictive success, Ekudden forecasts other trends that the future of technology may take us. He predicts the interplay of these technology trends will be the catalyst for global transformation. According to Ekudden, the six trends to watch in the year ahead are:

• The Internet of Skills
• Cyber-physical systems
• Distributed compute and storage
• Ubiquitous radio access
• Security assurance
• Zero-touch networks

The first two trends, he explains, are about demanding use cases, while the final four are about technologies that are evolving the network platform. In his article, Ekudden explained, “Distributed compute and storage is a new addition in 2019. The other five trends have been part of our trend analysis for the last few years. In this year’s article, I build on last year’s conclusions and provide more context about our vision of the future network platform.”

 

Read the 2019 technology trends in full to find out more about how these six trends are transforming our world.

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The term “silo effect” when used in the workplace, is a term that describes the occurrence when separate departments or teams within an organization don’t have a system to communicate effectively with each other. Because of this, productivity suffers. Despite that technology is an effective tool for communication and collaboration in the workplace, the silo effect is still a problem to some teams. Lauren at Trello shares how the silo effect is hurting cross team collaboration and what we can do to fix it.

Every company has different departments working for their own supervisors. While these different teams don’t communicate on a daily basis, it’s important that the management does. It’s the only way a company can function with all these moving parts. as Lauren describes, sometimes silos can develop because of differences in opinion or down barriers between department leaders over priorities. This can be alleviated with open and honest meetings. She suggests having meaningful creative collaboration between employees with various skill sets as it is is a great way to facilitate long-term communication within a silo. Giving employees the chance to work closely together on large-scale projects will foster healthy communication across the firm. If you’re company is fast moving or simply too large to have people physically meet in one place, fear not because that’s what the cloud is for. Online chatrooms, forums, task and meeting spaces are a great virtual setup for individuals to collaborate almost as effectively as being in the same room. There are so many tools out there that are specifically designed to facilitate communication between employees wherever they are. Some examples include Google Drive, Google Docs, Slack, Dropbox and Trello meeting boards and other Trello based platforms. Having different and distinct departments is a good thing, but it is also good if these different parts still work together. The bottom line, Lauren explains, is differentiation across departments and teams is a good thing, but sometimes it can also be beneficial to create a mashup of skills and duties.

 

Original article posted by Lauren Marchese at Trello.

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