Visualizing The New CRM Marketplace By Chris Holmes, Mindjet Corporation

Written by Chris Holmes

Customer relationship management (CRM) software, like any other corporate application, has value only to the extent it is actually used by its intended audience. If that was the only basis on which this popular sales tool was judged, it wouldn't get the highest marks. While sales of CRM software and hosted services are expected to generate $8.2 billion in worldwide revenues in 2005 according to IDC, Gartner estimates that only one out of three sales professionals who have a CRM application available on his or her desktop will actually adopt it.

With more than $8 billion at stake, businesses need solutions that help their sales teams get much more value out of their CRM investments. Emerging technology that visually "maps" customer information is addressing barriers to greater adoption. Mapping technology reaches into CRM systems and extracts key data points, which are then presented in a very visual, highly interactive format. When visually mapped, information once locked inside CRM applications becomes pragmatic, actionable information that shortens sales cycles and helps close more sales.

Some of the highest quality customer data is captured during conversations between customers and salespeople. Resistance to CRM adoption flares up when the salesperson must take the results of these typically nonlinear conversations and somehow fit them into the relentlessly linear structure of most CRM interfaces. Linear text windows are simply not up to the task of efficiently capturing human interaction. The task of entering such information is so difficult and so time consuming that many sales people choose to store this key information outside of the CRM system.