We've heard a lot about mobile CRM and social CRM over the past year, but 2012 is widely expected to witness greater integration of the stalwart enterprise software system into more aspects of the business. Jennifer Lonoff Schiff at CIO magazine presents a variety of anticipated CRM-related developments in the year ahead from CRM experts.

• Peter Coffee, vice president and head of platform research at Salesforce.com: CRM in the cloud is expected to continue to expand as companies seek more information from external sources. It is more cost-effective to allow cloud-based systems to gather external data than purchase on-premise gear to do a similar function. "Old CRM was people inside the company talking about [customers]...information that's most important in a CRM system originates outside [company] walls, in conversations on social networks and in other external sources."
• Mitch Lieberman, vice president, market strategy for Sword Ciboodle: The success of CRM is increasingly dependent on application usability, making an accessible, understandable interface is vital. "Users are picky about their workspace, now more than ever represented by the screen in front of them. Data needs to be available through one UI, in context."
• Pamela O'Hara, president of BatchBook: CRM will play a growing role in how businesses interact with customers. "Businesses that use CRM effectively will benefit from pulling all the loose strings together in one place and developing a stronger bond with each customer." 
• Paul Turner, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite: Integration between CRM and other critical systems, such as ERP, will become more important and may lead to more efficient processes--although sticking disparate systems together could lead to problems. "Organizations want integrated lead-to-cash processes, an integrated view of the customer, and more comprehensive cross-functional reporting--and vendors will try and adapt their offerings to meet this demand...Look for systems that are designed from the ground up to work as a single solution to get the maximum benefits."
• Clint Oram, co-founder, CTO and vice president of product strategy for SugarCRM: Technical features, such as interfaces and delivery models are becoming more important to users. "That will give CRM applications designed for ease of integration and user self-customizability an advantage, and will leave vendors whose products come in a single flavor of SaaS [software as a service] scrambling to expand customer options, often through cumbersome workarounds...In 2012, CRM systems will be bought in terms of the strength of the mobile component. Vendors with strong mobile components will gain a significant advantage over those that lack it, and many vendors will play catch-up around native clients and security."

For more:
- see Jennifer Lonoff Schiff's article at CIO

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