Insights from the Gartner CRM Summit
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Nov 10, 2009
This year's North American Gartner CRM Summit highlighted important changes in technology and innovation, many driven by the rise of social media and social networks.
If you divide the CRM market into Operational CRM, Analytical CRM and Social CRM, as Gartner does, then Social CRM has the smallest share of current spending (10%) but the highest share of growth in spending (60%). In fact, Gartner analyst Michael Maoz said that "Networks matter more to your success than any other initiative."
When Jim Davies gave his "State of EFM" address, he too emphasized the rise in social technologies, emphasizing the integration of social feedback within enterprise feedback management, noting that market-research online communities are now a part of many EFM platforms, including Vovici. For Jim, the leaders of the EFM market remain Vovici and Confirmit, and he expects continued consolidation in the industry (Vovici has purchased three companies: Perseus, WebSurveyor and Surveyo, as well as Raosoft web-survey assets).
Not all social technologies encourage innovation, though: research director Gareth Herschel reported that Gartner clients had seen marginal-to-no ROI from investments in blog content analysis, and Gartner instead advocates that its customers learn the language of the Voice of the Customer by asking more open-ended questions in surveys and then text mining the responses. As you innovate, you need to monitor your progress, and Herschel emphasized the need to select 5-9 key performance indicators from the hundreds of performance indicators your organization follows. In a separate presentation, Herschel said that organizations need to engage in meta-analysis, analyzing their analysis process, to make sure that they improve the quality of decisions that they make in the future.
Kathy Harris, a Gartner distinguished analyst, provided a good summary of the conference. She asserted that "CRM is the most fruitful innovation opportunity for your company and your customers"; make sure to use EFM (which Gartner sees as a subset of CRM) as you "embrace your customers in co-creation."
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