Top 5 CRM Trends for 2018

16th May 2018

CRM solutions have become integral to business success with new unified cloud-based offerings coming with a high degree of scalability. Solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics are changing the perception of what CRM brings to the table in terms of organizational success. Here are a few emerging trends in CRM this year:

Cloud based CRM: With organizations of all sizes seeking easier-to-deploy and faster ROI alternatives to modernizing legacy systems and implementing new applications, SaaS based CRM is rapidly emerging as the model of choice. More and more businesses are migrating their CRM applications to the Cloud to leverage the flexibility, ease of access, and affordability SaaS solutions deliver.

Integrated Solutions Vs. Standalone CRM offerings: Traditionally, CRM applications were limited in their ability to integrate and gather data from other sources. This scenario has undergone a sea change with modern CRM applications that are starting to integrate with related software applications and productivity tools. CRM solutions are now providing seamless integration with marketing automation software, ecommerce platforms, analytics software, productivity software, accounting systems and more. Solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics offer seamless and unified solutions with powerful dashboard features and predictive analytics through integration with tools such as Power BI. With newer versions of Dynamics, we expect to see a closer integration with products such as Office 365 and embedded Power BI.

CRM for business verticals: The next generation of intelligent business applications will deliver a unified approach to traditional business solutions with new purpose-built applications to power digital transformation strategies. Dynamics 365 is a great example of a solution built for specific business functions such as sales, marketing and finance, offering an entire suite of apps to provide 360-degree management of a business.  Because the apps are connected to each other, they facilitate connections between team members and automated workflows. Take the example of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing which allows marketeers to generate more leads from multi-channel campaigns across email, landing pages, webinars, and phone calls, in person events, LinkedIn and more. By personalizing the buyer’s journey, lead nurturing is made more effective while using embedded intelligence capabilities like dynamic segmentation means higher level of audience targeting.

CRM for mobile: Another rapidly emerging trend is a mobile-first approach to CRM, which is about using CRM technology as a mobile-first platform on which to build everything, from customer-facing apps to customer support. Increasingly, factors which drive companies to opt for a specific software include multichannel marketing and mobility, since mobile CRM increases the efficiency of sales teams. Benefits such as on-site reporting in real time, increased productivity and improved customer experience are other reasons for the rising deployment of CRM solutions on mobile devices.

Big Data: Leveraging data for improved and intelligent customer engagement is a key organizational concern. However, transforming data into actionable intelligent insights has several challenges. Joining together data from multiple structured and unstructured sources with different identities is complex. A key CRM trend that is gaining prominence is CRM solutions that bring together data easily with near-instant updates and make it easy to apply pre-packaged analytics that allow organizations to develop an always up-to-date customer profile. Something like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights – a cloud-based SaaS service that enables organizations of all sizes to bring together data from multiple sources and generate knowledge and insights for business will power innovation through predictive and actionable insights.

Conclusion

CRM is at a transformational stage with newer, more sophisticated features adding tremendous organizational insights and business value with every new release. To understand how Dynamics 365 can be used to bring about business success please write to us on  marketing@levtechconsulting.com.