This is actually pretty cool: a timeline history of CRM, from Software Advice.
From the early days of the PC:
To our much heralded (hyped?) social web 2.0 future:
It’s fun to trace the history of technology and Customer Relationship Management applications:
- Early 1980’s: Personal Computers -> ACT!, desktop single user sales automation software, 1986
- Late 1980’s: Client/Server -> Siebel, multi-user CRM, 1993
- 1995: Netscape and the Internet -> Salesforce.com, web-based CRM, 1999
- 2010: Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing -> ?
What, indeed, will the future bring? Even bigger changes.
If you’ve used ACT! or GoldMine, you’d probably recognize today’s CRM suites. Why? Because customers and how we sell to them haven’t changed much in 30 years.
Today, the fundamental concept of “customer” is changing. That must mean CRM will undergo even more radical change than it has in the last 10 years.