CRM’s Next 5 in 5

CRM's Next 5 in 5

Each year, IBM publishes "The Next 5 in 5," in which they predict the five technologies that will change the way we work, play and live in the next five years. Some of their predictions this year seem plausible: systems will use your unique biological identity to protect your information, eliminating the need for passwords. Others border on sci-fi: scientists will create technology that links your brain waves to your devices, allowing you to control them with your mind.

I wanted to follow IBM's lead and ask, "Where will CRM be five years from now?" To answer that, I reached out to some of the foremost thought leaders in the field:

• Ray Wang, Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research


• Brent Leary, Owner at CRM Essentials


• Esteban Kolsky, Principal & Founder at ThinkJar LLC


• Denis Pombriant, CEO at Beagle Research Group, LLC


• Paul Greenberg, Owner at The 56 Group, LLC


• Brian Solis, Principal at Altimeter Group

Without further ado, I present the five technologies that will change CRM in the next five years.

Context Services Will Provide a Clearer Picture of Customers

A key benefit of CRM is that it aggregates information about current and prospective customers, collectively painting a picture of the person or organization a company is dealing with. Context services, with data originating from social media, location-based services and mobile devices, contribute additional context (location, relationships, behavior, etc.) to that information. The result is a far richer customer profile. These services provide the foundation for intuitive offers, which are promotions or up-sell opportunities based on customer interactions and behaviors.

Ray Wang suggests that in the next five years, we will see tremendous growth in context services and the data they provide. A key source of this context data will be from mobile devices. Gartner predicts that by 2015, 1.8 billion people will have smartphones. Of those, they estimate 40 percent will opt-in to context services that track their activities. By 2017, these numbers will increase and, based on current growth, likely double. This could fuel an entirely new mobile CRM industry.

Real-time Customer Intelligence Will Become a Reality

The variety and sources of customer data is exploding,...