Personalized Customer Experience Driving the Evolution of CRM Services

Los Angeles, June, 2021 Cloud-based CRM suites are seeing increased adoption due to the ability to personalize the customer experience. These new capabilities are driving a 30% increase in CRM implementation services this year including CRM architecture, design, and managed services.   These trends, and others, are covered in our new CRM Implementation Services 2021 RadarView report. The report is a comprehensive study of CRM service providers, including the top trends, analysis, recommendations, and a close look at the leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers in this market.  We evaluated over 40 service providers across three dimensions: practice maturity, partnership ecosystem, and investments and innovation. The result is our recognition of 26 providers that have brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.  The report recognizes service providers in four categories: 

• Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, IBM, Infosys, TCS, Wipro 
• Innovators: Atos, Deloitte, DXC, LTI, PwC, Tech Mahindra 
• Disruptors: CGI, Fujitsu, Hexaware, Mindtree, NTT DATA, UST, Zensar 
• Challengers: BearingPoint, Birlasoft, Mphasis, Nagarro, T-Systems 

Figure 1 from the full report illustrates these categories: "Today's cloud-based CRM suites are much better integrated between the functions of sales, marketing, customer service, and even commerce," said Frank Scavo, President of Avasant Research. "It is now possible to segment your customers into groups of one and deliver a truly personalized customer experience."  The full report explores a number of other trends in the CRM implementation services market, with a few of them highlighted below.  

• The pandemic has accelerated the move to online transactions, further encouraging organizations to increase their investments in CRM to enable remote connectivity and transform front office processes to digital channels. 
• Cloud-based CRM systems have not diminished the role of CRM service providers. Rather, their services are transitioning to include higher level architecture and design services as well as management consulting. 
• Managed services are shifting from people-led to tech-led deals with service providers offering proprietary solutions to streamline application management, testing, training, and support services. 

• CRM remains front and center of the provider investment strategy as they aim to win in a highly competitive market. As the CRM market matures, service providers are finding success by investing in industry-specific CRM solutions and acquiring specialist CRM consulting firms.  

“There will always be a need for service providers to be able to deliver CRM implementation, integration, and maintenance services,” said Ritika Nijhawan, Analyst at Avasant, and the author of the report. “But the best providers are now going beyond those technical services to provide services at a higher level, to really transform the customer experience."   The full report also features detailed profiles of the 26 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in delivering CRM implementation services.  This Research Byte is a brief overview of the CRM Implementation Services 2021 RadarView™ report.