Gartner reports that CRM remains high on the business agenda for CIOs in 2010. Through 2010, marketing budgets will remain flat in more than 90 percent of companies, despite a return to growth.
"As a result, marketing organizations will need to automate operational processes and learn how to leverage technology to measure areas previously left unmeasured, enabling them to do more for less," said Kimberly Collins, managing vice president at Gartner in the announcement.
Although social media hype will continue through 2010, companies are struggling to find a business case, including hard metrics and specific business outcomes, using general social activities and generic social applications. By the end of 2010, more than 80 percent of market growth in social applications will center around a business use case for improving external customer relationships, rather than improving internal collaboration.
By the end of 2010, Facebook will be the number one social network in all but 25 countries, but not in Brazil, Russia, India, China or Japan. According to Gartner, marketers and customer service management will need to switch focus from the large number of social networks to the three or four that will dominate specific languages.
Additional information is available in the reports “Predicts 2010: CRM Marketing Is Building Demand on a Limited Budget” and “Predicts 2010: Customer Service Meets Social CRM” as well as at the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summits 2010 in London, March 16-17 and in Los Angeles, June 28-30.
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter @ValValentineIM.
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