CRM Solutions

This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to CRM Solutions and Customer relationship management software and products. Providing customer service is vital to maintaining successful business relationships. Accurate and timely information provided in a professional manner is the key to any business and service operation. Our CRM software application TELEMATION, was developed with this in mind. But the ability to change is just as important in this ever changing business environment. Telemation call center software was designed from the very beginning for this environment. Many call center managers, with unique and changing requirements, have chosen and continue to use our CRM software as their solution of choice. Our contact center CRM solution is ideally suited for call center service bureaus.

By Erika Morphy

"The tech market is a longer cycle than most people realize. Right now, the industry is still focused around optimization of past innovations and further automation -- basically anything that makes existing technology cheaper and easier to deploy," says Forrester's Andrew Bartels.

Recent results from a Forrester Research survey of CIOs suggest that the worst of the I.T. spending drought finally is over. Not that the halcyon days of late 1990s have returned; the CIOs said their 2005 I.T. budgets will increase by some 6.4 percent.

But this rate, and the 7 percent overall industry growth rate the consulting firm is projecting, will make for a better I.T. environment, compared to the last couple of years.

What about CRM?

In the CRM space, though, vendors may not be accorded as much relief as those in other parts of the I.T. sector, Forrester analyst and report co-author Andrew Bartels told NewsFactor.

CRM is a small portion of an overall universe that is still struggling, he says. The enterprise-application segment -- which is still lagging behind the rest of the software business in growth -- represents 12 percent of the overall software market. CRM represents 16 percent of the enterprise-software space.

"Software spending overall in our forecast will grow reasonably well -- but not dramatically well -- during this period," Bartels said. "Software will grow 7 percent; enterprise apps will grow 5 percent; and CRM will grow at around 2 to 3 percent."

The upshot, he said, is that CRM is likely to continue to underperform.

Near Versus Long Term

But that is just in the near term. In about four years, Bartels is projecting another growth and spending spurt in I.T., and CRM will be going along for the ride.

"The tech market is a longer cycle than most people realize," he notes. "Right now, the industry is still focused around optimization of past innovations and further automation -- basically anything that makes existing technology cheaper and easier to deploy."

Not surprisingly, the next buying spurt will coincide with the next spurt in innovation, he says.

It is hard to predict exactly what that innovation will be, but Bartels believes the seeds of these new technologies are already evident today.

"RFID is one precursor," he says. "Right now, the tags and readers are dumb, but they will be much smarter later." For example, Bartels says, right now, a tag can identify a certain product, and that is it. In later cycles, he says, the tags will give real-time data on the state of the product (for example, is a container of cereal getting wet?).

"When that happens, it will change the whole notion of how business gets done," he predicts. "There will be a lot more information about where something is, what is happening, its condition and the environment."