CRM enters a new era: Systems that make decisions, not just store data

Customer relationship management in Turkey is moving from a record-keeping function toward a system that can recommend decisions and actions, driven by artificial intelligence, automation and low-code technologies.

The shift comes as CRM adoption remains limited. Data from the Turkish Statistical Institute’s 2025 Information and Communication Technology Usage in Enterprises survey shows that 12% of companies use CRM software, while 28.3% use enterprise resource planning systems. Paid cloud services reach 20.4% of businesses, and 55.2% use social media. CRM adoption falls to 9.9% among companies with 10 to 49 employees.

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A structure emerges in which disorder itself becomes the order. After a while, the company gets used to this fragmentation and accepts it not as a deficiency, but as a way of working.

At many companies, customer processes still run across Excel spreadsheets, email, messaging applications, accounting programs and other separate tools. This fragmented structure can duplicate customer records, make follow-up dependent on individuals, obscure where sales opportunities are lost and prevent managers from viewing the entire sales process in one place.

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Today, many companies still see CRM as a system where data is entered, stored and reported. In the next stage, it will read the company's own history and recommend which sale is at risk, which customer needs follow-up and what the next action should be.

İsa Demirci, founder of Eksenium, said companies can gradually become accustomed to that fragmentation and treat it as a normal way of working. “A structure emerges in which disorder itself becomes the order. After a while, the company gets used to this fragmentation and accepts it not as a deficiency, but as a way of working,” he said.

Demirci said AI would enable CRM systems to read a company’s own history, identify sales at risk, indicate which customers require follow-up and recommend the next action. “The real change will be CRM’s transformation from a place where records are kept into a place where the business is conducted and decisions are generated,” he said. He added that the success of CRM projects depends not only on software selection, but also on process design, data structure and whether employees incorporate the system into their daily work.

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The real change will be CRM's transformation from a place where records are kept into a place where the business is conducted and decisions are generated.