Although most businesses and their CRM systems acknowledge the necessity for developers to assist go-to-market operations, the job is still assigned as tasks. Dev work is portrayed as a backlog of tasks to complete. By isolating developers, they are pushed further apart from the consumers, leading to a product produced without considering the complete range of solution sets accessible.
Fortunately, in today’s business world, with the focus shifting to product-led growth, corporations and Dev CRM from Devrev are slowly turning the tide to make CRMs more developer-focused to bring the devs closer to their end-users. This post will delve deeper into this shift in the IT industry.
First-Generation CRM: CIO- and IT-Focused CRM
Customer Relationship Management as a concept originated in the 90s when Siebel developed the first sales management systems. Like many corporate software solutions at the time, these systems were designed to be deployed and integrated by a corporation’s IT team. The most significant issue in this first series of CRM systems is that they were designed and marketed to the CIO, then administered and customized by the IT team.
Second-Generation CRM: Arrival of SaaS
Now marketing and sales teams don’t have to depend on IT to buy, deploy, and administer multi-million dollar CRM software with minimal customization capabilities. Instead, companies could use an internet browser as the client to run a CRM to power marketing and sales activities without worrying about data centers. The main benefit of these sales software solutions was that they were much more economical and speedier to integrate than previous sales management software, making them practical and valuable for businesses and teams actively engaging with them.
Since it is a SaaS solution, functionality can be provided according to the demand. Hence, instead of licensing and deploying full-stack enterprise-level software to match expected demand, businesses could now opt for features and functionalities that they really used.
The SaaS sales management software industry has expanded to a multi-billion dollar market since Salesforce’s debut. This is advantageous to sales and brand building teams in all sectors. Some may assume that the sales management software ecosystem has reached maturity, with nothing left to do but continue to develop iteratively. Anyone who thinks that this technological revolution is over may have to broaden their thought horizon.
Third-Generation CRM: Developer-Centric CRM
Users’ interactions with digitally native firms are being transformed by the third iteration of developer-focused CRM tools. It’s possible that these digital-age businesses don’t have sales personnel. Many of these corporations may not even designate a chief information officer.
But they still have users to cater to, and those patrons use technology to communicate with the business. Even though these systems aren’t designated as CRM, they constitute CRM at their core.
According to the new criteria for digital enterprises established and controlled by software developers, people interact with the business by utilizing their apps. Consequently, the application must comprise all the features needed to execute transactions and address other consumer requests.
Interacting with consumers for these businesses isn’t about pushing a sale on a prospect or extensively investing in upkeeping a customer service call center. It is more about using automation and self-service protocols to suit consumer demands. APIs are progressively replacing SaaS-based CRM across sectors in this third generation of CRM solutions. Apart from Dev CRM from Devrev, here are a few benchmarks of CRM APIs:
- Twilio: When your cab-hailing app sends you a text notification, they aren’t utilizing the SMS or any other standard messaging app on their smartphone. They’re leveraging Twilio APIs through the cab-hailing app’s interface. Twilio delivers APIs for managing SMS and different sorts of messaging for the app industry. This CRM solution is also used when you receive a notification from your airline company informing you that your flight has been canceled or from delivery service companies informing you that your parcel has been dispatched. Their APIs allow developers to perform what customer service or call centers might do, but at a larger scale and with consistent performance.
- Stripe: Managing consumer payments is the most critical customer touchpoint for any firm. Stripe’s APIs make it simple to automate mobile payments and point-of-sale, and devs have many options for customizing the experience.
- Auth0: Auth0’s API is typically used in the background to register your profile and control access when opening an account for a discount brokerage service. New client induction is an essential sales management software function, and these unique verification APIs make it straightforward.
- Skyflow: Skyflow was developed with the goal of making it simple for corporations to segregate and safeguard critical customer data using a smart API, allowing them to deploy while protecting customer data and privacy swiftly. It is not easy to keep sensitive information like credit card details safe; hence, this fantastic API offers you a system to store all the sensitive information without fearing a data breach or leak. Companies may also address customers’ demand for encryption features while preserving data accessibility and concentrating on their primary competencies using Skyflow.
In this novel era, the sales manager and IT division are no longer custodians of the client relationship. The entire institution manages each client relationship. The nitty-gritty of those engagements is something a programmer must find out using APIs.
What Does Developer-Centric CRM Mean?
Consumers interact with businesses when they choose to, not when a cold call comes through; therefore, developer-focused CRM solutions are more customer-focused than former CRM versions. Over time, brand engagements are becoming increasingly customer-focused due to user-driven personalization and deep learning.
This follows a trajectory in CRM advancement: from no real-time monitoring of patrons in the first generation to data on sales utilization in the SaaS-based CRM age to a modern CRM APIs age where customer-focused interactions and automation takes the central position.
Final Thoughts
It’s all about automation, efficiency, and delivering customers what they expect with developer-centric CRM. They facilitate you to listen to your users on social media platforms and monitor their activities when interacting with your application. They enable you to fulfill consumer demands on the user’s timetable. Hence, developer-focused CRM is a must-have for firms with a product-led growth strategy.