Today, almost any company’s business performance depends on the customer more than ever. Customer experience is one of the top five priorities for 65% of CEOs. So today’s businesses want to be able to connect platforms and technology with customer data to provide a more personalized experience.
Meeting customer needs through great communication, excellent service and insight helps you build trust and really is a competitive advantage. Creating these connections takes some work, but there’s a powerful ally: customer relationship management (CRM) software.
The main purpose of CRM is to collect and analyze various data to increase business productivity and sales. The main task of such a program is to automate the interaction between the business and the client, as well as to optimize the work within the team. But it is not just a technical tool, but a philosophy of a client-oriented company.
In recent years, the number of users has shown staggering growth. Last year alone, the overall use of such systems increased from 56% to 74%. Businesses continue to invest in CRM solutions. The reason for this is not only improved performance, but also the need to keep up with their competitors and create a great customer experience.
Why do you need a CRM?
Using a system has a number of benefits, but if we focus on the main ones these are:
Providing a single database for all purposes.
Providing better service.
Tracking new business opportunities.
Facilitating collaboration between departments.
Providing a better return on investment.
The benefits may seem intangible at first glance, but according to research, a good CRM system can provide an $8.7 return on every dollar of investment, increasing their ROI.
Growth Factors
The global customer relationship management market size was estimated at $43.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2021 to 2028. The main driver of the industry is the increasing need for cloud solutions. Typically, most companies are opting for a cloud-based version of their CRM system deployment so that users have full access to the database wherever they are located. What has changed and digitized business is the global pandemic.
The increasing demand for automated customer interaction, the expansion of digital operations, and improved customer experience and services are also driving the demand for CRM solutions in various industries around the world. The growing need to identify, prioritize and minimize business problems is driving the adoption of CRM solutions in small and medium-sized enterprises around the world.
One of the key reasons for the popularity of the programs is also affordability. Companies and businesses need real-time access to customer data, which is why mobile solutions are rapidly evolving today. Although the use of CRM on a mobile device is still lower than on a laptop or computer, mobile solutions are becoming increasingly popular among business people.
The main developers
Since 2012, the global leader is the U.S. company Salesforce with a market share of 48.4%. The company’s net profit in 2020 reached $4.07 billion, while in 2019 such profit was only $126 million. Salesforce was actually the first company in the world to turn the cloud into a viable enterprise application platform. In second place is Microsoft, with its Microsoft Dynamics CRM product, which is a client-server application. It is followed by SAP, Adobe Campaign and Oracle Netsuite.
Numbers and facts.
Companies are looking to improve their customer relationships as quickly as possible. Often this means investing in CRM early — within the first 5 years of launch. When the technology is rolled out to the business, about 80% of sales, 46% of marketing and 45% of customer service employees use it. There’s also data like this to highlight:
- 91% of companies in the West with more than 11 employees are already using CRM.
- Firms that use the software increase their sales by an average of 29%.
- The conversion rate of leads is 300% higher when using CRM.
- The same report shows that nearly 75% of businesses with software improve customer relationships.
- CRM improves reporting accuracy by 42%.
Customer Relationship Management is now one of the largest software markets in the world, showing explosive growth among business users. And it will continue to expand as companies of all sizes embrace new technologies.