Where is CRM headed?

The concept of relationship marketing is nothing new, but internet technology has made it possible for businesses to manage relationships in fresh, innovative ways. The ability to store and organize client and prospect data digitally has given marketers a brand new set of tools to increase customer acquisition and retention in a cost-effective manner. More recent technologies like cloud computing and advanced web analytics are already beginning to revolutionize business processes, and CRM is no exception.

In CRM's Next 5 in 5, software blogger and CRM analyst Lauren Carlson assembled a group of the industry's leading experts to discuss the emerging trends and technologies that will change the face of CRM forever. We have summarized their top five trends below:

1. Context services will continue to develop, giving businesses more useful data on their customers' wants, needs and preferences. Context services, such as location-based services, can provide a great deal of insight into consumer behavior. Since CRM systems serve to aggregate information about clients and prospects, they are the ideal framework for context services to live and grow.
2. Web analytics have given marketers an extremely valuable source of information for online consumer behavior. The time it takes for businesses to gather and evaluate analytics data, however, can often exceed the shelf life of the trends that businesses are trying to measure. The next step will be analytics applications that can process data and provide marketers with recommendations in real time. CRM software packages will store this information within individual client and prospect records for reporting purposes, and the boundlessness of cloud computing technology will allow for seemingly unlimited data storage.
3. As the lines between TV and the web continue to blur, CRM integration with internet-connected TV services will be developed further. As big-screen TVs with high-definition and 3D capabilities become more common, viewers will be in a position to experience rich content beyond what they would be able to view on smaller devices. Advanced CRM systems will be poised to collect user data on a whole new group of online consumers.
4. For some time now, businesses have cut costs by utilizing virtual meeting technologies, such as GoToMeeting and WebEx. As this tendency persists, the resulting content will need to be stored and organized, and CRM systems are the most logical place for it.
5. Gamification, that is the use of game design techniques to engage audiences, has already become a powerful trend in the marketing world, but as consumers become more accustomed to competitive interactivity in online media CRM service providers will capitalize on the tracking and data collection advantages of gaming.

Did we miss any? How do you envision the future of CRM?