Changing Trends of Field Force Automation Solutions in 2023

Field Force Automation industry is advancing at a rapid space over last few years. While it all started with FMCG industry and they remain pioneer as far as field CRM adoption is concerned. Over last few years we have seen steady growth in industries like Education & Edtech, Healthcare & Health tech, BFSI & Fintech, Construction as well. With more and more customers becoming their client, the solution providers are gradually becoming more adaptive towards changing needs of the field force management. At the same time, they are also continuously innovating with latest technology trends to stay relevant in the industry.

As the field CRM clients want to make sure they’re doing everything possible and have field force software to provide great customer service while maximizing the productivity of their field sales employees, these solutions are upgrading their capabilities to accommodate the information needs of field force managers and others in the hierarchy. By including new features and deployments, field force automation solutions are more robust than ever before. In light of these changing trends.

5 Field Force Automation Future Trends to Expect in 2023

Here are top 5 trends to watch out for field force automation solution:

‍

Off-the-shelf Integration Platform / Suite: Integration of field force automation CRM with any enterprise level system or website or social media pages is no longer requirement of only fortune 1000 companies. Clients across the board are looking for the same to ensure seamless information flow and better discipline. These solution providers also understand that such integrations will help in better adoption and reduces the chance of client switching to some other solution too quickly. To ensure integration doesn’t become a bottleneck in any implementation, field CRM solution providers are working on building integration suite which will have off-the-shelf APIs for important master data and transaction data integration such as outlet, product, attendance, order etc.

Data-driven Intelligence: There is no second thought that data-driven decision making is key to success of any business. For years, clients have largely relied on analysts who will extract intelligence from the data captured in field CRM or any other software. CRM solution providers are now building the capability of deriving intelligence in the form of actionable insights, predicting outcomes, recommending next steps etc. in the solution itself by utilizing different statistical and analytics software.

Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning: Making a computer function like a human brain is objective of AI and there is no doubt that there are enough use cases in Field Service Management where human efforts can be reduced or eliminated with the help of deep learning. Image recognition for attendance verification or visibility count, OCR for automatic store name / brand name detection, NLP for voice / chat bot are some of the key initiatives many field CRM solution providers are already working on.

Enhanced Focus on Customer Satisfaction: For decades, field force CRM implementations have had a higher failure rate than most other types of enterprise software. It’ not very uncommon that a big bang go-live of a great CRM Solution is followed by gradual reduction in usage within few months and eventually a complete closure soon after resulting in complete waste of time, money and effort of not just client, but also of the CRM vendor. To avoid such a situation, solution providers are focusing more on customer success by proactively engaging with them in terms of driving adoptions, understanding analytics needs etc.

‍Building a Partner Eco-system: Big players in the CRM space are already following a model where they concentrate only on the product improvements and innovations and let a capable third-party partner do the implementation for the client. While this is a risk because you don’t have control in terms of quality of implementation and client interaction, but still many mid-sized players are moving towards this model to ensure a greater reach across the globe and to ensure more focus is given on product level initiatives.