Integrating customer relationship management with Twitter will
be increasingly important to help businesses improve profitability
during the economic slowdown.
Salesforce.com is the first to offer integration with social
networking websites; however, according to independent market
analyst firm Datamonitor, other customer relationship management
(CRM) suppliers are likely to closely follow the company and begin
addressing demands for social networking in the near future.
Analyst Datamonitor said Twitter allows companies to make
information more readily available. For instance, some
banks are already using Twitter to boost customer service.
Customers are also using Twitter for sharing advice and information
among themselves.
According to Datamonitor, Oracle and SAP have begun to consider
Twitter but have so far been more tentative than Salesforce.com.
Oracle is offering the option for enterprises to publish
information from CRM OnDemand directly to Twitter, and SAP has
demoed Twitter monitoring as a part of its Business Suite 7.
Unified communications and telephony suppliers are also likely to
form relationships, with Avaya having just announced integration
with Facebook for its new Aura platform.
