8 in 10 B2B marketers agree that CRM systems don’t always capture or provide the information needed when they’re trying to close a high-margin deal, says a recent study from Corporate Visions, while the CMO Council finds that few marketers agreeing that their current customer information system acquires and delivers real-time account-related news to the sales organization. At the same time, research from IBM suggests that many CMOs believe that CRM technologies can help them achieve their goals. So what features are most requested by prospective CRM software buyers? Software Advice takes a look in a recent study.
Based on more than 5,000 interactions with prospective CRM software buyers conducted between January and August, Software Advice found that top-requested features are:
- Contact management (45.2%);
- Note-taking capabilities (28.1%);
- Reporting/analytics (25.9%); and
- Integration (24.4%).
Fewer prospective buyers are looking for features such as custom dashboards (7.4%) and a user-friendly interface (6.8%).
The results are interesting as they provide some perspective into what marketers’ technological pain points are. It’s therefore none too surprising to see contact management and analytics features among the most-requested, as studies (such as those linked to above) have found marketers feeling that they’re not gaining enough insights from their data – and not exploiting their existing opportunities.
That points to a general need to improve productivity and efficiency – and the Software Advice survey indeed shows that the leading reason respondents give for replacing an existing CRM system is to improve their efficiency (35.2%). Others are looking for more or better features (29.7%) – presumably with a similar goal in mind, while 1 in 5 are seeking better integration than afforded by their current system.
