CRM Week in Review: The Changes in CRM

Prominently, this week, TMC (News - Alert) reviewed the changes that are occurring in the CRM industry. Customer relationship management used to be an innovative approach of tying several different methodologies together to drive higher sales numbers and larger volumes per sale. While a number of companies have implemented CRM systems to help drive this new approach to the sales process, the platform has passed the point of innovation and has now become the default tool in a number of sales departments.

CRM continues to be an effective tool for a number of different sales activities, yet the potential for so much more already exists. Best-in-Class organizations are taking Inside Sales to a whole new level by deploying tools that do more than store and report on data. New CRM software solutions help to change behavior and drive productivity. Recent industry studies demonstrate more and more companies are turning to their inside sales teams to create added demand, nurture prospects and drive additional revenue – which are all vital in this new economic climate. In some situations, the inside sales team is the sole driver of revenue for the company as a result of budget restraints on sales and marketing or increased pressure on management to get more for less.With these changes have come measureable shifts in responsibilities within the inside sales team. This has increased the importance of enabling these team members to have access to effective tools and technologies that allow them to do their jobs more effectively.

We also discussed the necessity of implementing a CRM program as David Sims writes: If you're counting on price discounting for anything more than short-term sales boosts, you're not thinking straight, according to Amanda Squires, client services director at Pod1.

For long-term goals, Squires says, you need to implement a thorough customer relationship management program: "This is particularly relevant with the higher end of the high street and luxury brands where discounting is just not part of the brand strategy."

CRM can help e-tailers "more effectively use the assets they already have," she notes, by tapping into a wealth of information – "including inventory, buying guides, videos, and site search and sales data, not forgetting input from their existing community."

He also discussed Amazon’s role in the cloud computing CRM industry. Industry observer David Linthicum reminds us that no, in fact, cloud computing is not the answer to everything that ails ya -- "specifically, when there are high-end computational requirements and the processors need to be more tightly coupled to support high-performance computing standards such as MPI."

Linthicum does consider Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) as promising, however, since "putting the right tools in the shed... seems to be Amazon.com's intent with its new high-performance-computing cloud service offering, which could provide a home for those special applications that require supercomputing power."

This week, TMC hosted several up-and-coming companies in the CRM industry, not the least of which was Ringio (News - Alert), a start-up that has developed a unique call processing system. Sam Aparicio, co-founder and CEO, and Michael Zirngibl, co-founder and chairman of Ringio both dropped CTO and CEO positions respectively at Angel.com to start a cloud-based call routing service that emphasizes ease-of-use and effective improvement of customer interaction.  

Hosting an informative demo at TMC’s Comunicano (News - Alert) Day, Aparicio and Zirngibl showcased Ringio’s simple yet efficient software that is sure to breach the cloud communications scene with a bang. Developing Ringio as a “cloud-based solution to help businesses get better over the phone,” the founders “wanted to simplify the technology” of call center services, stated Zirngibl. Taking a Skype (News - Alert)-like approach to call center technology, both officials knew they never wanted to own actual data centers again.

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