What is the Biggest ROI of CRM Investment?

New report delves into how companies find, buy and use Customer Relationship Management software.

Forbes predicts that by 2017 the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market will be worth $36 billion.

To understand the potential for growth that CRM technology offers, software provider Capterra has released a new report to understand how businesses are using this type of software and where it can be improved in the coming years.

Surveying 500 CRM users, the research found that with 18 per cent the retail industry was the most common segment of users and it was nearly twice the size of the next industry (business services, 10 per cent).

In the report, Capterra explained: "Retailers benefit from CRM data by tracking purchase behaviour over time, suggesting related products for upselling opportunities, and logging loyalty points in customers' accounts to apply toward discounts and free offers."

Other key findings within the report include:

• According to respondents, CRM software had the biggest impact on customer retention rates and customer satisfaction rates (47 per cent, respectively), followed by sales revenue (45 per cent) and upselling./cross-selling (39 per cent);
• More than half of users adopted a CRM within their company's first five years in business, and two-thirds of companies had at least 100 customers when they first purchased a CRM;
• One third of CRM users use Salesforce, while other software industry giants Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP combine with Salesforce to dominate 75 per cent of the CRM market;
• On average, businesses spend $150/user/month on their CRM. 61 per cent spend over $50 per month per user; and
• Despite the growth of Social CRM people still want more, and the most desired CRM features were social media monitoring capabilities (25 per cent) and the ability to pull in prospect information from social media (24 per cent).

Capterra concluded that with widespread adoption and overall user satisfaction, the biggest growth opportunities in the CRM industry will be twofold:

• New businesses will continue to adopt CRM technology as the economy continues to improve; and
• Current CRM vendors will upsell their users on add-ons and plug-ins to make better use of their CRM database, such as help desk software for customer service teams or marketing automation systems for marketers.