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7 Savoy Court, London, WC2R 0EX
Email: contact@relata.ai
Charlie Henderson
Quick reads
“CRM is the bundling of customer strategy and processes, supported by the relevant software, for the purpose of improving customer loyalty and, eventually, corporate profitability.*”
Estimated to be a $40 billion dollar industry last year, the CRM industry is the largest software industry and is expected to continue growing at a rate of 14.2% CAGR. By 2025 the CRM sector will have doubled in 5 years to over $80 billion. According to SuperOffice, CRM usage in 2019 grew from 56% to 74%, and 91% of business with over 11 employees using a CRM compared with 50% with 10 employees or less.
Love them or loathe them, CRMs are not going anywhere.
Other trends that we are seeing have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased usage of multiple communication channels has rapidly accelerated the demand for mobile CRM solutions. In addition, there has been a shift away from on-premise hosting solutions towards more flexible cloud options. In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM – this figure has now increased to 87%.
Combining these trends with conversations we’ve had with CRM leaders in sell-side organisations has revealed some potential pitfalls that may accompany this rapid growth:
According to Salesforce, 91% of CRM data is incomplete and 70% goes bad or becomes obsolete every year. FeedStock’s analysis of email interactions in a typical sell-side enterprise found that 2,500 capital market professionals could generate 2.5 million action records per day. Each of these records has 33.6 attributes, leading to 21 billion data points annually. Combining this analysis with Forbes’ statistic that 14 hours per week of a sales professional’s time is spent doing non-revenue generating activities such as manually inputting data into a CRM, it becomes clear that the time-cost and data quality when dealing with that quantity of data is unfeasible.
We believe that automation of data capture is the solution to this challenge.
FeedStock’s automated data capture technology has proven to capture 10 times more data than an industry leading CRM system. This data can either be piped directly into an existing CRM system or be accessed through customisable APIs for an even more granular approach.
Customer needs and behaviours are changing fast and sales professionals are required to operate across an ever-increasing number of channels and mediums. To outperform in this environment, it is essential to gain access to real-time intelligence on client engagement levels. Sales professionals need to be able to fully visualise trending topics and the success or failure of sales campaigns as they land. Particularly in investment banking and IRPs, the value of immediacy, to be able to respond and act based on a deeper customer and prospect understanding, has grown significantly.
Manual inputs not only open up the process to human error, they also create drag to workflows and delay revenue-generating actions. Many of the digital leaders we have spoken to on the sell-side talk about the need to empower enterprise revenue-generators with the data and analytics needed to make the right decisions. Real-time access to data is critical to this process.
Coronavirus has accelerated the trend towards cloud adoption which has been gaining momentum over the past five years. Global enterprises have surprised themselves with the rate at which the crisis environment has precipitated this transformation. This recent FeedStock article “What does a successful enterprise cloud solution look like?” addresses in detail the various challenges that cloud migration presents. It looks at how hybrid hosting solutions can ease the transition and enable enterprises to find an approach which caters for their specific legal, regulatory and privacy requirements. To refer back to the opening quote of this article, CRM systems must be “supported by the relevant software”. FeedStock is driven by this requirement to adapt and tailor our integration solutions to support the needs of our clients.
Deploying FeedStock’s software is like installing an automated, intelligent smart meter in your new home. Any business operating in today’s world needs a CRM, but the ability to populate, enhance and analyse the data in an automated, intelligent way is what will enable that business to thrive. The bricks and mortar of your house are a much-needed foundation and protective outer layer. However, the smart meter is what enables the house to feel like a home. It integrates into every aspect of your life and ensures that you transition through the seasons without ever touching a heating switch, wasting no energy whatsoever, and can reallocate the time to more worthy activities. FeedStock’s AI data-capture and intelligent NLP algorithms have enabled our IRP clients to identify 300% more chargeable client events, without disrupting front-office employees in any way. As we approach what will likely be a recessionary environment, gaining data-driven intelligence into enterprise activities and conducting a full audit of processes and operations will be pivotal in dictating the eventual outcome of an enterprise. FeedStock is uniquely positioned to deliver the required data and analytics to navigate this environment successfully.
Frederick F. Reichheld , Phil Schefter and Darrell K. Rigby, Harvard Business Review, Avoid the four perils of CRM, (February 2002)
