CASE STUDY / HUBSPOT
CRM signals future of supplier management technology
As a concept and a technology customer relationship management has a 20-year headstart on SRM. Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of market leader HubSpot, describes what the future has in store for CRM and shows what it might mean for managing suppliers.
T he landscape is shifting quite a bit in terms of where to expect major new advances in technology. In recent years, the advent of easily accessible technologies such as video, real-time chat, and bots have dramatically improved a business’ ability to reach and serve customers and prospects. I am sure we will continue to see all sorts of innovations that save time, reduce costs and improve quality. However, in terms of big, dramatic leaps in productivity, the focus of innovation will be less on major new features and more on how all the parts work together. In the front-office — the customer-facing space — CRM systems and tools that help manage the full customer journey from marketing through sales to customer service, are designed to provide staff and managers with a single view of the customer. From a single pane of glass, everyone can see a history of a customer’s interaction with the company, from an initial visit to the website to becoming a lead, from the sales process through customer service and retention —even to customers driving new leads with positive word-of-mouth. At the same time, customer information will always exist in all sorts of systems and solutions. Those independent products and other system-of-record platforms will continue to capture and generate customer information; they will continue to consume and provide information with the breadth of applications up and down the technology stack. The typical medium-sized business today uses
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