Heavy Investment In CRM Predicted From Financial Institutions

Financial institutions will continue to rely heavily on customer-relationship management applications to drive revenue in coming years, according to research firm the TowerGroup.

Retail financial institutions will spend about $4.3 billion on CRM globally in 2001, with $2.2 billion of that coming from North American businesses, according to research from the TowerGroup's retail banking services. That kind of spending is expected to drive a compound annual growth rate of 6% for the CRM industry between 2001 and 2005.

The TowerGroup expects retail financial institutions to focus on customer-knowledge technologies that include data warehousing, analytics, and knowledge distribution. Customer knowledge distribution technologies, which account for about 19% of the CRM market, are expected to expand more rapidly than the CRM technologies, with 7.8% compound annual growth predicted through 2005. The research included campaign management and database marketing software as well as personalization software that directs personalized messages at specific customers or customer segments.