The global CRM market will worth $81.9 billion by 2025. It has the power to easily manage business processes for companies of any size. Nowadays, it is more than just sales opportunities, CRM can be a part of the whole customer engagement pipeline.

This year, 62% of CRM will be cloud-based, and the cloud computing market will reach $127,5 billion. Social CRM market will be more than $9 billion.

Forrester CRM predictions believe that CRM will be more emotional, easy and effective. For example, clients are more digitally connected and companies may use CRM to attract customers in the omnichannel environments. If taking into account improved efficiency, CRM allows businesses to deliver personalized communication. By using data-driven analytics, it’s easy to predict further steps. Besides, Forrester CRM predictions emphasize that CRM ensures the guidance for the global teams, and eliminate traditional time-consuming approaches.

Investing in client relationships improves satisfaction rates and increases revenue. Permanent review of the customer feedback from the unstructured and structured data may create needed emotional connections between businesses and the customers.

Future of CRM Software

When the future is vague and unpredictable, it is difficult to build the processes wisely. Future trends in CRM will help you to focus your attention and business efforts according to the customers’ expectations and wishes. Moreover, they help you to be well equipped to serve your audience better.

Customer experience has become more important than pricing and products. By 2020, it will be the main brand differentiator. In addition, customer expectations are changing by providing clients with more power. Nowadays, they can control where and why, how to cooperate with sales managers. According to the Harvard Business Review, more than 50% of Twitter users expect a reply from the companies within two hours.

A Rise of Mobile CRM

Mobile CRM is keeping grow each day. Reports showed that more than 1000 companies applied CRM mobile apps in 2016. The value of it is huge because of the need to use online services on-the-go.

Research by Innoppl Technologies showed that 65% of sales managers who use a mobile CRM have reached their goals comparing to 22% of reps from non-mobile CRM strategy.

Mobile CRM updates information and allows employees all over the world to achieve the same level of awareness about what is going on. Besides, cloud solutions may be immediately saved in the mobile CRM. Shipping and production will be visible for the clients anytime.

Sounds pretty good? Let’s dive deeper to know how to start using mobile CRM. First of all, identify your key goals and your employees’ needs to benefit from real-time data access. After that, work on internal buy-in, needed device, and mobile app usability.

Start with in-house training for successful using of the apps. It may seem pretty easy but sometimes users don’t know about additional hidden features that may simplify their work. User guides are important to keep in mind the needed possibilities of the apps and basic advantage of mobile CRM usage.

Next step will be helping your sales team to successfully apply a smartphone CRM. Many apps are supported by Blackberry, iOS, and Android, so bear in mind to discuss this issue with your team.

To simplify the work, focus only on required features such as scheduling a meeting and updating valuable information.

Social CRM

Winning the loyalty of modern clients and staying always available require deep understanding of what they need and when. So, most of the CRM systems will gain integration of social media with CRM. Social CRM helps to interact with the clients by using social networks. It allows capturing a better insight into whether customer journey is good or not.

The best CRM 2018 may take advantage of a robust customer profile to improve marketing and sales. In general, social CRM is applied to refine service levels and the multi-channel customer journey. It helps to match company’s products and services with clients’ needs and expectations.

Nowadays, clients want to switch easily between different channels and get a fast response from the companies. If the service provider remembers a client, it makes the cooperation much easier and faster.

Moreover, large businesses may get feedback through social media. For example, telecoms giant BT receives 40% of their feedback via Twitter. Then, these messages may be tracked and handled in a smart way.

Social CRM makes cooperation with the customers quicker and allows predicting their further needs. It helps to deliver on-time solutions for their struggles. Such fast problem solving improves the brand reputation as well.

A company’s service that offers direct interaction with a client on Facebook is engaging for the audience. Satisfied customers may share their pleasant experience with their friends.

The best CRM 2018 makes the collaboration with the audience a two-way street. Instead of a passive usage, clients are active participants and influencers of the process. They may freely share their feedback to adapt the product to their everyday life.

A marketing team is responsible for creating engaging content to capture the attention of the audience. By using tracking and monitoring tools, you may see the reaction of your customers and align your work according to their feedback.

Marketing Automation to Drive CRM

Marketing automation is one of the quickest growing trends in CRM market. In the past, CRM was perceived as a sales tool. Now, marketing automation helps to boost pipeline of leads. It stores needed data, speeds up the interaction with the customers and support brand consistency.

CRM software helps to trigger and deliver messages based on data-driven analytics. That makes the cooperation more personalized and marketing automation enables CRM to be more productive.

These are the main advantages of it:

• Eliminating the loss of data while exporting and importing, and supporting data integrity.
• In-depth data based on past purchases, preferences and inquiries.
• Always available sales information to boost leads and improve the sales process.
• Automated messages to re-engage passive clients and win them back.

The Dominance of Cloud CRM

We wrote about cloud CRM in our previous article and it’s time to emphasize it once again: cloud-based CRM is your compulsory element of business strategy. Experts predict that the cloud services market will be USD 350 billion by 2021.

Gartner CRM prediction believes that the key 10 cloud providers will bring 70% of IaaS revenues in the near future, with the dominance of Microsoft, Rackspace, and Google.

On the other hand, companies will expect more from IaaS providers. For example, move easily between multiple clouds. Moreover, they will require the multi cloud agreements with the alignment to their specific needs, no “one-size-fits-all” approach. SaaS now is desired delivery model with purpose-built offerings made to fulfill strict customers’ demands.

A Rise of Integrated CRM

Users will require deep integration of CRM with other software systems. Especially with e-commerce software, marketing automation, analytics platforms, etc. Sync of CRM with other business departments and solutions, for example, business analytics software will be in high demand in near future.

All-in-one CRM covers various purposes. For instance, integrated CRM with marketing automation will ensure relevant messaging. If you implement the software independently, you will stuck easily. The main reason is that you need to track both platforms to check the work. Integration opens a door without any distractions in the communication.

Moreover, two separate software requires two different approaches to capture and analyze data. This makes the operations overwhelming and new data may fall apart.

Through integration, you have an opportunity to manage all contacts, communication, and other issues under one single platform. The data can be tracked and measured easily for the further analysis and predictions.

Verticalization of CRM

Verticalization of CRM is one of the important trends in CRM market. It gives the companies an opportunity to stand out among competitors and accelerate all the processes. Companies may take advantage of applying industry-specific CRM solutions like OpenGov, Veeva, Vlocity with the needed level of expertise.

Probably, horizontal CRM will be replaced by the vertical CRMs that help companies to overcome specific challenges. Nowadays, each vendor has vertical templates or verticalized know-how to fulfill existing gaps.

The vertical CRM market will keep growing. Vertical CRM apps are divided into two categories: easy verticals with the similar CRM capabilities and more complicated verticals with end-to-end flows. The first one serves companies with multiple areas of focus.

Vertical CRM systems carry away the entire development cost from the end user. It means that the customers have the ability to cut the costs comparing to horizontal CRM software. In most cases, it may be customized to add needed features.

The main disadvantage is that you can miss the flexibility of from-the scratch customization. Also, it is a more expensive solution than a horizontal CRM system.

CRM of Things

Nowadays, clients interact with various devices simultaneously and each device may be a source of customer information to predict further actions and demands. CRM professionals already start taken advantage of the innovations and flow of information in the connected world. For example, wearable technology and smartphones may capture information to transform it into valuable insights to deliver personalized treatment of each customer.

Let’s consider the main trends of CRM of Things.

• Wearable CRM. Sync of various devices with CRM may bring sales managers real-time access to the needed data.
• Greater CRM profiles. You may take advantage of different forms of unstructured and structured data to create a 360-degree view of the customer. Advanced CRM systems gather data from social media, connected devices, and any available resources to create a needed profile of the customers for better cooperation.
• Predicting of the customer needs. Predictive analytics is must-have now in the competitive environment. It applies pattern recognition based on client’s history for creating appropriate offers.
• Flexible pricing. Real-time data enables a business to develop pricing strategy based on user location and demands.
• Automated solutions. Connected devices automatically interact with your company's tech stack, there's a chance to delete the possible anxiety from the cooperation and automate chatting based on machine-generated responses.
• Deep analysis. Multiple connected devices bring more accurate data for creating successful strategies.

These future trends in CRM make business processes much easier. On the other hand, CRM of things has many challenges out there. First of all, various technology vendors use different forms of communication protocols and data management. It makes difficult to unite all insights and business solutions under one roof.

The second challenge is an overwhelming amount of data and lack of understanding how to use all data. Moreover, when devices capture information about each client’s actions, preferences and behaviors, privacy and security issue will arise.

Self-service

Customers expect self-service not only in the shopping malls. For example, 90% of them want to gain an access to a self-service support portal to fix their issues immediately. There is a theory as well that by 2020, smartphones will be used as a backup if other channels will be broken.

Artificial Intelligence

Future of CRM software can’t be imagined without AI solutions. Artificial intelligence will free up the managers from the routine tasks. By 2020, clients will handle 85% of their tasks by AI-powered systems. 8 of 10 companies are working on implementing artificial intelligence to improve CRM systems.

Implementing AI into CRM helps to offer virtual assistants for customers’ struggles, allowing them to achieve a higher level of productivity. This virtual assistant will speed up and automate responses, emails newsletters, and follow-ups.

This software has an access to the needed data to explore it and reach greater sales. These virtual assistants can even create quotes, book a time with the customer. So, sales managers will become more productive and well equipped based on data and quick access to inventory and policies, profile information. It helps to make better decision making.

With AI, you may get refined segmentation. Intelligent systems will divide the audience by location, purchase history, gender, web behavior, etc. AI-assisted CRM will improve by learning from the past experience. Insights will help to bring personalized messages and find the right channel for each client.

Artificial intelligence will help in prioritizing best leads and lead scoring for sales managers. Moreover, AI will predict next actions for successful deals.

AI will be responsible for creating target profiles for customer retention. It will help the sales team to customize interactions and refine their efficiency.

In addition, AI-integrated CRM may help create a strategy for leads and deals, ensure achieving the results.

Snackable CRM/Messaging

According to Gartner, companies that can’t integrate customer interaction strategy and good data management will lose a 25% of growth in potential revenue. Businesses globally are willing to use CRM-based campaigns to attract and retain their audience across various channels.

CRM is key in engaging customers through the relevant messages right on time. AI-driven tools will lead the process when, how, why and to whom send the messages.

Nowadays, bots may identify user demographics and other points to recognize potential market segments. It helps to measure sales patterns and track traffic.

Increasing need and usage of social computing and web-based interfaces are key factors to increase the worldwide CRM software market. Moreover, growing implementation of CRM software in the financial and banking services sector refines the growth of the market. Growing popularity of mobile and social CRM is another accelerator of the growth of the worldwide CRM software market.

Let’s sum up. CRM will gain new approaches to attract new customers and improve client satisfaction. The future of customer relationship management is based on the ability to absorb client information from different resources and take advantage of it. CRM software may transform unstructured and structured data into valuable insights to serve the customers better and deliver personalized solutions.

Besides, companies will use social CRM to interact with the clients fast and easy. With a lack of time, quicker customer relationship management trends will make a difference for big and small businesses.

The CRM news 2018 and global CRM software market shows a demand to advance services and keep moving at a steady pace. Nowadays, the business world has already seen many tech advancements. Key players look for better technologies in order to run and develop their business.

This push motivates businesses to improve how they interact with their clients. Moreover, new CRM will help to manage customer data, support client-business and save sensitive business data under one roof. This software also helps to boost the sales flows. In general, this software will refine the