CRM is a computer program which gives any company a chance to become a highly organized company oriented on customers having placed them in the center of all information channels related to them and provides sales people the access to the required data. In the customer oriented company sales people will have the access to the whole information which, one way or another, influences their relations with customers. Negotiations, informal discussion, letters, complaints, reclamations, all the information which has been sent to the customer – everything that can influence the ability of the sales people to provide services and, as a result, sell more goods and services.

The customer oriented companies handle clients’ requests more quickly and accurately as the whole necessary information is stored in one place. Thanks to this, the company can have a higher index of client retention than the competitors that are organized traditionally.

Speaking about 14 most promising IT technologies of the next five years we cannot but mention social skills (the previous posts – Rich Internet Applications for “rich” software development and 14 technologies that won’t become obsolete before 2014: foundations of software development).

#7. Social skills.

Of course we don’t mean such tings as psychological and oratorical skills for programmers. Software developers may not need books like «How to win friends and influence people». Nevertheless they often face with customers and need to speak common language with them.

Business and software are closely connected with each other. Specialists can’t change their business processes without proper changes in their software. For example, Chief Financial Officer can’t change the accounting rules without working with IT department to update the system. And call center can’t optimize its work without IT specialists updating the CRM workflow. So customers often need to work directly with the development team to make sure that their requirements were properly reflected in developed software products.

So developers are more and more involved in non-development meetings and processes to provide feedback control. And those specialists who can acquire skills of affective communication will be highly valued in labor market.