Trends And Innovations In KM (Knowledge Management) And CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Essays Examples

Introduction

Knowledge management refers to a process that captures, distributes, and effectively uses knowledge. The discipline is meant to provide a cohesive mechanism for handling information related resources. The assets may include policies, documents, procedures, un-captured expertise, databases and the experiences of individual workers. Consumer relationship management, on the other hand, refers to strategies, practices, and technologies that organizations use for the management and analysis of consumer interactions. It is also used for the analysis of data throughout a consumer’s life cycle, with the aim of enhancing business relationships with customers. It concentrates on helping an organization retain customers and enhance sales growth. CRM systems are usually designed to compile information concerning consumers across different channels. The systems can also give detailed information concerning a consumer’s purchase history, their personal information and buying preferences. This paper examines recent trends and future innovations in knowledge management and customer relationship management.

Recent trends and future innovations in knowledge management

With the rapid evolution of technologies, scholars, intellectuals and think tanks from various disciplines agree that knowledge tends to be the pivot of transformation. They have acknowledged the significance of knowledge management and its complex nature, illustrating that it will be advantageous to comprehend upcoming trends associated with knowledge management. There have been significant changes in the manner in which organization handle their knowledge management. Some recent trends in knowledge management include Enterprise 2.0. This trend involves empowering employees and giving them an open platform that they can use to share expertise and express opinion. Enterprise 2.0 aims at building on management by passing control to the network. It aims at empowering employees to work autonomous (Dave, Dave & Shishodia, 2012). Since it aims at loosening control, it ensures information flows directly from an originator to a recipient, enhancing innovation and faster knowledge sharing. The trend uses emergent social software platforms in companies and their customers or partners. The primary objective of this trend is to produce an efficient, intelligent and productive workforce in the organization. It aims at ensuring employees communicate freely with inter and intra teams of the organization and the external environment, which encompasses clients, customers, and vendors.
The other recent trend in knowledge management is the semantic web also known as web 3.0. It is based on the fact that it is not just humans who understand information, but machines can also understand the information. Organizations can benefit from the trend by defining company-wide metadata in various forms of knowledge. This helps in improving consistency and coherence when classifying information resulting in accurate search results. The trend aims at making web-accessible data amenable to machine processing (Dave, Dave & Shishodia, 2012). It involves labeling information to help humans and computer systems to process the information meaningfully. Semantic web tools have made significant contributions to the performance of knowledge management.
An example of a future innovation in knowledge management can be seen from ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous technologies encompass mobile and wireless technologies. It works with sensor networking, mobile computing, machine learning and distributed computing. Although it is a growing a field, the advent of the trend is likely to change knowledge management. The innovation will enhance the accurate and timely capture of logistics data and will not depend on human intervention (Boughzala, Ermine & Favennec, 2010). Areas that might benefit from ubiquitous computing include asset tracking, retail, and seamless supply chain management.

Recent trends and future innovations in consumer relationship management

Initially, Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) efforts resulted in failures in the generation of revenue. The advent of smartphones and social media caused businesses to re-evaluate their CRM initiatives. Today, marketing and sales landscapes have been changing to adapt to consumer behavior. Some recent trends in CRM include cloud-based CRM. Cloud-based software has proven to be an efficient means that can be used to gather customer information. It is stipulated that cloud-based CRM will continue to gain momentum with the progress of cloud-based applications (Columbus, 2013).
The other recent trend in CRM is social CRM. Consumers have been enlightened by social networking sites, which have influenced brand images and perceptions. Social media gamification and optimization are considered marketing strategies that can help keep consumers engaged with the company and the brand. The other trend is centralized data. CRM aims at understanding consumers through widespread data collection and analysis. Centralizing consumer data through CRM will enable businesses to engage and target consumers effectively (Eid, 2012). This implies that CRM data will not just entail generating leads for sales, but it will be a continuous process, which will involve maintaining relationships with the growing consumer base.
The other recent trend in CRM is characterized by mobility. Today, mobility is a vital corporate component consumers are concentrating on ways that can enable them to access data constantly. This implies that frontline consumer service resources will be empowered by mobile devices. Consumer perceptions will not just be defined by real world involvement but through online and mobile experiences. The other recent trend in CRM is flexibility. Flexibility is critical for CRM because it enables users to customize a software to meet their needs (Eid, 2012). Consumers have been gaining voice through social media, meaning that enterprises may be forced to embrace crowdsourcing for business improvements. The trend will help tap consumers for fresh ideas, expectations and solutions, which can help employees in an organization, develop interactive relationships and innovations that consumers expect.

Future innovations in CRM

Marketing and technology aspects of CRM are likely to grow in the future. Organizations that aim at harnessing consumer relationships should consider strategies that are in line with their consumers and those consumers would like to gain. Future innovations in CRM will include mobile and web-based technologies, which will create interactive platforms that will enable people and communities to share and modify user-generated content. Such innovations will introduce substantial changes to the communication process between communities, organizations, and individuals.
The other innovation is social media, which has proven to be different from traditional media evident from aspects such as reach, quality, usability, frequency, permanence, and immediacy. Many internet users spend a lot of time on social media sites than other sites. In CRM, social media is more that Twitter and Facebook. It refers to social data collected about members, their interactions and connections with an organization’s website (Eid, 2012).

Conclusion

In summary, knowledge management and CRM are growing fields with immense potential. The tracking of day-to-day activities and developments has been changing with time because of the advent of new trends and innovations. It will be instrumental for organizations to work on the technologies that are more promising. The trends and technologies will provide practical solutions to glitches in knowledge management and CRM.

References

Boughzala, I., Ermine, J.-L., & Favennec, P.-N. (2010). Trends in Enterprise Knowledge Management. London: Wiley.
Columbus, L. (2013, May 21). How cloud integration is defining the future of CRM - Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/05/21/how-cloud-integration-is-defining-the-future-of-crm/
Dave, M., Dave, M., & Shishodia, S. Y. (2012). Emerging trends and technologies in knowledge management: A holistic vision. International Journal of Recent Research and Review,, 3, 60-67.
Eid, R. (2012). Successful customer relationship management programs and technologies: Issues and trends. Hershey, PA: Business Science Reference.