23.6. So Where Will CRM Go from Here?

You probably can't wait for all the improvements anyway, so do the best with what's available now. We want to build a CRM infrastructure that is standard and open enough that you can just plug in the tools when they become available.

It's certainly important to keep your radar turned on for new tools, technologies, and information sources. We talked about a couple of fairly new tools earlier. The avatar discussed in Chapter 21 is one good example of a technology that is emerging to humanize the web site experience. New sources of customer information and new tools for analysis and data mining appear all the time. If you wait until all the breakthroughs are developed, you'll never get started. Design your CRM infrastructure for flexibility, and keep you options open. Look for—in fact, demand—options that are open and designed to work well with other products so you can protect and secure your customer information without sacrificing functionality and capabilities. This may be the eleventh CRM commandment!

So here's my wish list for what I hope becomes available as a product—and soon. The CRM industry needs a true customer reference database system that is designed to be independent of any application, but completely open and easily and efficiently accessible from any application. The database product could come empty or could contain data from one or more information suppliers. This dream product needs to include mapping and loading utilities and extensive quality assessment and data management tools. But someone just needs to start with some basics, and soon!

My family suggested that, instead of writing this concluding chapter, I should just tell you to get going.

So, why are you just sitting there reading?