With more people now accessing the Internet via computers, tablets, smartphones and other hand held gadgets, main challenge is how to capitalise on this trend to market products and services online.

According to Ali Hussein, CEO, 3mice interactive media Ltd- a partner in this year's CIO 100 awards- the potential of the digital marketing still remains unexploited. "We see the intersection of commerce and technology as a real area of opportunity that can be enabled by technology such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Analytics and Intelligence, coordinating and making sense of all media (paid, earned and owned) as potentially critical in transforming African businesses to become global players," said Mr Hussein.

CRM is a model for managing a company's interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects with goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, service and retain those the company already has, entice former clients to return, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. According to a post on digital marketing at webopedia online forum, technology and the web have changed the way companies approach CRM strategies because "advances in technology have also changed consumer buying behaviour and offers new ways for companies to communicate with customers and collect data about them."

This is because with each "new advance in technology, especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the web and smartphones, customer relationships is being managed electronically." Many aspects of CRM relies heavily on technology; however the strategies and processes of a good CRM system will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of letting you market and sell services effectively.

"At 3mice, we have moved beyond just web development to interactive commerce which is at the intersection of Marketing & Technology… we felt a need to bring in global best practices and have chosen to partner with IBM on their Smarter Commerce vertical specifically their enterprise Marketing Management offering. We will soon be rolling this out to some of our key customers," explains Mr. Hussein.

The IBM's Digital Marketing Optimisation Suite for instance seamlessly integrates the data and insights garnered from customer profiles and web analytics into applications designed to easily execute display advertising, search campaigns, email, and personalised recommendations through online, social and mobile channels. With the need to respond quickly and effectively to capture and retain the attention of customers, marketers need the tools that allow them to easily execute and automate marketing efforts in real time, not just at scale, but also on a one-to-one level to provide relevant content and offerings.