The crm market - Italy

1.1 Definition and presentation

CRM stands for customer relationship management. The goal of CRM software is to optimize the processing and analysis of customer and prospect data. CRM systems help companies increase corporate sales success by using customer data to better target consumer needs and habits and more effectively win new markets. This customer relationship management is part of a policy to track customer information and monitor customer interactions. Accordingly, CRM includes any marketing device or activity whose goal is to improve the quality of customer relationships, from customer retention to maximizing revenue or profit per customer. CRM programs fall into two types: "on site" programs, which allow a company to purchase a license that allows it to host the software on its own server, and SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM, which allows customers to access applications and systems hosted by an external provider via the Internet. Customer management software is becoming increasingly essential, as is creating a loyalty bond with customers through a variety of techniques ranging from direct help to the use of newsletters and social media campaigns.

Although Italy is not among the top countries for business digitization, the usefulness of the system allows for easy integration even in small and medium-sized businesses. In 2021, CRM software is becoming an essential means of competing in the marketplace especially because of the change that Covid-19 is bringing to customer behaviors and needs. The most widely used platforms in Italy are Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Suite CRM, and Oracle.

The new trend for the CRM market will be the use of artificial intelligence-enabled systems that will bring CRM and customer service closer together. We anticipate that "smart" chatbots will be used in support services to provide solutions based on artificial intelligence machine learning, predictive analytics and natural language processing. To do this, Italian companies need to start handling big data analytics and invest in innovating old systems.