Home featured Cloud Featured Management Cloud To win over customers, embrace technology that puts them at the heart of your business James Harkness May 10, 2018 The world is in midst of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, an era characterised by an avalanche of digital innovations changing what customers expect from businesses. In the realm of small business, operators are having to embrace technologies like the cloud, social, mobile, and artificial intelligence (AI) to find, win and retain today’s consumers –more connected than ever before, they want superior experiences on demand. Despite the bottom line benefits of customer-centric technologies, most small businesses haven’t embraced arguably the most important one: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. According to Digital Opportunities for Today’s Small Businesses , a recent Deloitte Access Economics report, companies with CRM systems have on average 44% higher revenue than those with no system or basic paper or spreadsheet systems. Simply put, CRM software liberates small businesses from administrative burdens such as manual data entry, enabling them to concentrate on selling to customers, responding to customer enquiries and ‘bigger picture’ activities such as pursuing new growth opportunities. With small business owners generally kept busy wearing multiple hats, it’s disconcerting that Deloitte Access Economics found that just 30% of Australia’s small businesses have adopted a CRM system. Why is this the case? The number one reason given by non-adopters was the belief that their existing system is good enough, followed by the perceived expense. Similarly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that