Industry expert Julie Hahnke is among those that see CRM ascending. She pegs CRM as one of the hottest drivers of new systems initiatives in Fortune 500 companies. If it is a rental car customer clicking away on a transactional Web site, it is the conventional customer as described in Marketing 101. There is another broad customer type. Just as there are several ways to define a customer, there are a number of angles from which to approach CRM and EPM solutions.
Various analysts have quite different takes on the issues.
Like many things today, the job is largely integration work. But not all solutions take integration as the starting point. Companies that have invested successfully in corporate data warehouses are likely to build their CRM or EPM solution using the warehouse tools suites. The vendors here may be one step ahead. The goal was to create a CRM powerhouse.