Trend of CRM Integration with Social Media Applications

Here is my explanation on a key trend that within the CRM marketplace: CRM software Integration with Social Media applications

With the tremendous growth in Social Media spending in today’s marketplace, a number of prominent CRM vendors now offer direct integration with major Social Media applications and platforms, rather than taking the time to develop such functionality internally.  The reasoning behind the direct integration with Social Media vendor applications and platforms is that developing such comprehensive functionality internally will take too much time and effort, leading to the CRM vendor losing numerous sales opportunities and revenue from the present growth in Social Media spending.

As a consequence of the increasing need for Social Media information, ISM foresees that major CRM vendors will need to open up their collaboration platforms in order to accelerate their integration of Social Media tools to provide services that they do not presently offer.  Unless these major CRM vendors act towards opening their platforms, smaller Social Media companies such as INgage Networks, Lithium, Jive, Socialtext will increase their presence in the marketplace with their ability to have a more open platform that can integrate easily with other Social Media applications.

As an example of such movement by Social Media companies: recently, the Social Media vendor Lithium rolled out a Social CRM suite as discussed in this article: http://bit.ly/fQN0Mn

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