Is CRM development still in?

Back to Basics

If you ever found yourself in the position to Google “best tech skills to have on my resume”, then you’ll know where I am coming from; the pursuit to stay on top of the coding food chain, to not be left behind on where the demand is heading and where the big bucks are lying, I was quite surprised when I came across a list that, admittedly, left me opening another tab to fully define the curiosity. It’s a well-known name in the business environment, but much more than that, I couldn’t say. So it read: “Currently, Salesforce CRM Architect is one of the hottest skills to have on your tech resume” (here is the post).

Crash course breakdown: CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM is a tool used by companies to improve their business. One of the top CRMs currently in the world is Salesforce (see this report). They dominate the market with about 20%. A CRM system helps different departments (like sales, customer service, and marketing) have access to one central database, by sharing information with each other. It is essentially a centralized place to track customer data. Think filing cabinet meets Rolodex meets excel, in a much less outdated and online cloud-based way. Basically, it improves productivity for anybody who’s top priority is anticipating and meeting customer demand and improving relationship satisfaction. Do you know a business like that? One ad campaign of a driving force brand comes to mind. The point is that CRM isn’t going out of demand soon, in fact only increasing, as it is ultimately the customers driving the success of any business.

Taking into consideration that all businesses are continuously looking to improve on their processes and that CRM systems are available as one high demand solution, being utilized every day by big tech giants to your friendly neighborhood call center, the relevance of CRM development today is as big as it was 10 years ago if not more. I wouldn’t mind being on the right side of that demand, would you?

To help explore the transition into CRM specialization here are some main topics to think about. I’ll review the role of the CRM developer, what you need to know as a CRM dev, and different CRM types.

The Role of the CRM developer

The specifics and details of each CRM developer role out there will obviously be slightly different, however here is the broad description of the role that you will likely encounter.

• CRM Developers very rarely work in isolation and therefore are normally part of a larger development team consisting of many other roles, including systems architects, other developers, business analysts and product owners.
• You can expect to collaborate as part of a larger team and work towards a common goal.
• Day to day work would circle around three main areas, namely Integration (off all the existing systems and services into CRM architecture), Customization (to fit the business needs of the company) and Deployment (provisioning of the greater CRM system to different environments).

a larger development team consisting of many other roles, including systems architects, other developers, business analysts and product owners.

• You can expect to collaborate as part of a larger team and work towards a common goal.
• Day to day work would circle around three main areas, namely Integration (off all the existing systems and services into CRM architecture), Customization (to fit the business needs of the company) and Deployment (provisioning of the greater CRM system to different environments).

What you need to know as a CRM dev

The exact technologies that you would need to know depend on the CRM you’d be working on (and there are many). So instead of just dumping a list of technologies, here are the areas that you should have sufficient, verging on expert, skills in:

• The software development life cycle (SDLC)
• A clear understanding of how CRM software works
• Solution design
• Developer Operations (DevOps)
• Source control (Git or similar)
• Continuous Deployment and Integration (CD and CI) Tools
• Great communication skills and self-motivated
• Databases

Different types of CRM

What you need to know is that there are different ways of using and implementing CRM. Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, among other products, provide a platform for developers to distribute and develop custom CRM software. Operational CRM includes services and products that allow you to take care of customers and provide support to the different business processes. The sharing of customer interactions within different departments is Collaborative CRM, and when customer’s buying behaviour is analyzed to build new processes, it is referred to as Analytical CRM. Decide which customization you want to expand in. You will find a fantastic source to help you learn more about the main CRM types to build upon here, and the applications thereof might motivate you just more to start delving into CRM specialization.