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According to Gartner, the CRM global arena is a 10 billion euro industry, with an annual growth rate of more than 25%. In total, it is estimated that more than 1 million companies use a CRM system, which also means there is vast potential for the years to come.
That’s a big market.
But how will CRM look like in five years from now? Well, that’s a question for analysts to ask (check out here an interesting piece from Software Advice), and for key players or influencers to answer.
The trends highlighted by Lauren Carlson with expert advice in the article from Software Advice relate to the following…
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Connecting the dots: Networking CRM & The Next Web; Foto: Mangaia Milky Way by Tunc Tezel
The Semantic Web is an expression that began with a technical meaning.
Most people define the Semantic Web as a web that is able to describe things in a way that computers can understand. Other people refer to it simply as the definition of a… web of data. In any kind of explanation though, The Semantic Web is part of Web 3.0 and Web 4.0, because it will be able to analyze all the data on the web: links, content, transactions between people, computers, mobile devices. This dream not yet come true (of all people who understand that our ability to create content will eventually make us sink in it) means, basically, that we will need to find a way to make our computers work seamlessly with huge amounts of information, and then sort & understand it in such a way that it will become available to us at the blink of an eye.
Instead of us searching for words and expressions on Google and then trying to make sense of the resulting hundreds of pages, in the Web 3.0 and 4.0 Semantic Web age, the online software shell surrounding us in all mobile devices will be able to find out instantly what we desire and then feed that information or data to us. Basically, it looks like in the next web, people will become some kind of end user, because all the processes of searching, accessing and transforming data into knowledge will be done by machines…
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Whether you work in media, programming, Wall Street or, for that matter, anywhere else, you might have noticed that our collective ability to create information exceeds our ability to manage it. There are trillions of web pages out there and the number is increasing exponentially, with every new tweet, Facebook status update, blog or concept that gets invented. And even though you might have been blessed with a very structured mind, when becoming aware of this huge amount of information, your brain will immediately perceive it’s huge potential, but it will also be left with no tools to manage it.
Now. If Web 1.0 was all about desktop computing, pre-networks and limited to e-mail, documents, spreadsheets, images and video, then Web 2.0 took things to the next level, delivering networking through websites and applications (social networks with comments, blogs, youtube and instant interactions). And it’s all fine, up until the point where you start realizing that all these two way interactions and all the user generated content essentially translate into huge amounts of data that first of all needs to be stored and then it needs to be accessed.
Obviously, there is a parallel to be seen here regarding CRM Systems which have developed according to the Web itself. If at first we had desktop CRM systems to deal with, we can now enjoy the benefits of Cloud systems that are far more engaging and user friendly.
Sadly, the problems and implications regarding the amount of data and the access to information are practically the same in both cases. And looking ahead at Web 3.0 (happening now), Web 4.0 (in about 4-5 years) and beyond is, of course, the only hope for CRM Systems as well…
