Alan DraperIt seems like cloud and big data are the only things that exist in today’s IT world. Anywhere you turn you are likely to stumble upon one of these. IT pros are excited about bringing the big data technology into enterprise intelligence to make them smarter. The speculations are on to integrate big data solution to enterprise CRM solution to improve its performance and transform it into business intelligence software.
Most companies now have a CRM system to manage its leads, contacts and sales process. It’s being used by the sales and marketing team to explore more sales opportunities. But in most areas CRM is still limited to be used only as contact management software. It only structures the information inserted in it but misses out the bigger picture. Integrating big data to the system may offer wider perspective to the situation.
What is big data?
According to the definition published in Wikipedia, ‘Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.’
According to IBM, 90% of the total volume of data worldwide was generated during the last two years. From this one can understand the sheer size of the information generated by internet users worldwide on a regular basis. This information includes their personal data, experiences, preferences, thoughts etc. This is a trove of critical information for companies. This can offer in-depth insight about customers which then can be used by the companies to create personalized services for them. Here is why you must consider integrating big data technology to your business.
Improved customer understanding: The CRM solution can be applied to imply logic and define correlation between several sets of data. The CRM solution will be able to offer better insight and will be able to categorize customers based on the findings. This will let a company track its most valued customers so that they receive preferential treatment to extend their lifetime value.
Improved customer service: The analytics will help analyzing performance of the organization in offering sales, marketing and customer support services. It will help improving customer experience and at the same time, evaluating the ROI of CRM application.
Supports decision making: Once you have the statistics evaluating customer-facing operation you can fine tune them accordingly to improve performance. You’ll be able to support your decision with appropriate data and statistics.
Apprehend trends: The insight will help businesses in understanding changing customer trends so that they can plan accordingly. It helps analyzing the past activities of the customer to shed light on his future behavior.
Set benchmark: The big data integrated CRM solution will let the company track how it’s faring over a period time against its competitors. Benchmark analysis on key customer service areas will reveal scopes for improvement in terms of return on investment, customer retention, new businesses acquisition, cost per customer, and more.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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Thanks for relaying this information, Paul! The organization of big data and then analytically translating the collected data, are just the tip of the iceberg for social CRM capabilities. Once fully adopted an SCRM platform, like GreenRope, can provide an intimate understanding of your customer base. Not only does this increase the credibility of a business, it allows them to quickly resolve any issues/inquiries that may arise. Furthermore, with the data available a business can stay alert to potential consumer trends and stay competitive in today’s technologically progressive environment.
Great article Paul! We believe Big Data will be the saving grace for overworked salespeople burnt out on Excel reports. I’m dreaming of a world where you never have to fill out a sales report and know 2 months in advance if you’re likely to hit your quarterly quota.
Collin Stewart, co-founder voltageCRM (CRM + Big Data = Happy Salespeople)
Paul, very nice article on Big Data. We are seeing an increase in businesses seeking specialized skills to help address challenges that arose with the era of big data. The HPCC Systems platform from LexisNexis helps to fill this gap by allowing data analysts themselves to own the complete data lifecycle. Designed by data scientists, ECL is a declarative programming language used to express data algorithms across the entire HPCC platform. Their built-in analytics libraries for Machine Learning and BI integration provide a complete integrated solution from data ingestion and data processing to data delivery. More at http://hpccsystems.com
It’s good to see this article explaining how using CRM along with Big Data can make it so much easier to manage. Having massive amounts of data is useless unless there is a proper infrastructure in place to put it to good use. Neither businesses nor customers want to have to waste time trawling through irrelevant data to get the information they need. As Paul points out in his article, data needs to be categorised to allow companies to keep close track of their most valued customers, in turn improving the customer experience overall. Data alone is useless; it needs to be combined with a good CRM system in order to build genuine relationships between businesses and customers.
Mike Richardson, Managing Director – EMEA, Maximizer Software