SMBs tech report, IT pain points, investments in 2013

BANGALORE, INDIA: Scribe Software, CRM data integration solution provider has announced the results of a new industry study focused on the state of CRM in the Small Business (SMB) sector, and top SMB IT pain points and areas of investment in 2013.

Over 300 respondents from among Scribe's channel partners, systems integrators, customers and prospects provided feedback and insights in late November/ early December of 2012, said a press release.

"As we move into the next year, the SMB sector certainly is not slowing. We're seeing small and medium businesses investing, making things happen, and reaping the benefits of an accelerated business pace," said Lou Guercia ,CEO of Scribe Software.

"In 2013, we will continue to make integration easy, simple, and affordable for SMBs to get closer to their data so SMBs can make smarter decisions and empower their employees to provide superior service to their customers," added Guercia.

Highlights from the report include:

1) CRM has become a critical business system for SMBs and SMBs are increasingly savvy in their use of Marketing, Analytics, and Forecasting:

* The report further added that SMBs use their CRM for the management of prospect and customer contact information (94 percent), lead nurturing (65 percent), email marketing (59 percent), and sales forecasting (59 percent).

* SMBs look to their CRM to store all prospect and customer information in one place (85 percent), provide capabilities to easily share data between departments (77 percent), report on the health of their sales pipeline (64 percent), and to run marketing reports (53 percent).

* SMBs report seamless data integration between Marketing and Sales (59 percent); Marketing and Finance (39 percent); Finance and Sales (38 percent).

2) The biggest IT challenge faced by SMBs today lies in data quality and data integration:

* SMBs are seriously challenged in their ability to share critical financial data on prospects and customers with the rest of the business:

* Only 40 percent of SMBs report seamless prospect data sharing between finance and sales, and finance and marketing. An additional 60 percent still report struggles on their journey to seamless data sharing.

* 43 percent report seamless customer data sharing between finance and sales, and 41 percent between finance and marketing, and finance and customer service.

* The methods SMBs use to achieve data integration are inadequate with only 18 percent reporting marketing data as being fully automated with their CRM.

* The lack of automated marketing data integration poses reporting challenges for SMBs- 52 percent find marketing reporting and 44 percent indicate sales reporting to be somewhat or very challenging.

* SMBs will invest in virtual events and conference platforms (24 percent), email (16 percent) and sales compensation platforms (11 percent).

* SMBs report the CRM is owned by IT in 64 percent of cases, followed by Sales (10 percent), Operations (10 percent), Marketing (8 percent), and other departments at 8 percent. SMBs also largely report continued on-premise instances of CRM, in 66 percent of cases. An additional 34 percent of SMBs report cloud-based CRM systems. CRM Ownership Type of CRM System Used

4) CRM Ownership

* Reported CRM Systems in Use: Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM Online, SugarCRM, SalesLogix, Zoho, and NetSuite.