This article is an interview with Jill Dyche, a partner and co-founder of Baseline Consulting, and author of The CRM Handbook, the CRM best-seller. Jill talks about the recent evolution of CRM and what to expect in the future. The highlights follow:

On changes in CRM over the last three years - Companies do operational CRM well, but don't push themselves to do analytics. When you have a robust data integration and management infrastructure, you can do analytical CRM - a huge competitive differentiator.

On the biggest surprises in the CRM field - Companies have been slow to attain a 360-degree view of their customers. Also, while data quality issues have gotten much attention, few companies address data quality in a deliberate, sustainable way.

What leading edge companies are doing now with CRM - Giving customers access to their own data is an emerging priority. This access increases customer loyalty. Customers can more easily reorder products they like and use often, and it helps create marketing campaigns built around customers' actual histories.

Future CRM changes - The big initiative is customer data integration, or CDI. This is technology and functionality specific to customer identity management and individualizing customers for the company.

Advice on preparing for the future - Understand customer touch points and how customers feel about their interaction with your organization. Also, understand business requirements at a strategic level. Do some strategy mapping so your company's view of its customers evolves in tandem with the company's growth.

Synergy between data warehousing and CRM - Data warehousing is a CRM best practice.