I have been implementing CRM for different industries since 2003. I got opportunities to work on different CRM products: Custom Built CRM, Siebel CRM, Oracle CRM and last several years I have been working on Salesforce CRM
During all my implementations one thing that always decides success of CRM is 360 Degree Views. I have been listening and using this phrase in all my implementations. This is also a reason for poor adoption of great product. If a CRM application does not provide relevant information that is needed to perform the work then eventually user would stop using the application.
I know most of you would have listened and implemented this. 360 Degree View is a phrase used across industry to represent complete visibility of information that we are looking for.
In a CRM context 360 Degree View is widely used to represent a page that provides complete information of a customer or business. Information that this page would be displaying would vary business to business, but objective remains same that is to provide everything that is needed by user at one place with minimal click and delay.
Information that is needed in 360 Degree Views of CRM would be varying for different persona of CRM.
Someone at CEO & CFO Office would be requiring information that can tell them insights of their business while a sales executive would be more interested in getting details of his / her day-to-day activities.
For example, a Sales Head would be looking for information related to Sales Pipeline like number of leads, stage of opportunities, estimated revenues in current quarter or next quarter. This kind of information would be helping them to take important business decision and to identify the area that requires more attention.
Today a business user does not want to use multiple applications to find the information they are looking for. They expect CRM to be a single system to find the information. It does not mean CRM is going to be source of truth for everything and it is going to replace all other applications.
Today CRM is not just a single system, but it has been transformed to a system that is backbone to view information, interactions and transactions related to a customer or business.
Modern CRM systems are bringing information from multiple sources and presenting it to business user in single consolidated view and this is what we look for in a 360 Degree View of CRM.
In a CRM implementation we are expected to deliver several 360 Degree Views that maps to different types of users in CRM. Today CRM system is not only providing all relevant information in a single page but also providing several day to day operations in CRM application only. A CRM project is not about implementing a CRM product but to implement a CRM solution. In most of the cases scope includes development of several micro services that enables basic operation from CRM application itself.
Salesforce CRM provides all necessary tools and products to bring information across multiple systems and present in Salesforce Lightning Record Pages that represents 360 Degree Views. We can build a Salesforce record page or app page that brings information from Salesforce objects as well as from other systems through API calls.
To build a great 360 Degree View in Salesforce we leverage Salesforce capabilities as well as middleware tools like MuleSoft, Informatica and similar tools.
Definition of 360 Degree View is changing rapidly and now we are exploring option to harvest power of AI and provide more meaningful insights. OpenAI like ChatGPT is going to provide a new definition of 360 Degree Views. We are prototyping a 360 Degree View that is going to present information from multiple systems and feed that to ChatGPT and getting more insights and presenting consolidated information on CRM 360 Degree Views. We can imagine the 360 Degree page that is generated when the information that is available in CRM system and other connected systems combines the power of OpenAI.