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I believe " Successful CRM/CXM " is about competing in the relationship dimension. Not as an alternative to having a competitive product or reasonable price- but as a differentiator. If your competitors are doing the same thing you are (as they generally are), product and price won't give you a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage. But if you can get an edge based on how customers feel about your company, it's a much stickier--sustainable--relationship over the long haul.
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Dinesh Chandrasekar DC*

Saturday, August 20, 2011

WIFM in CRM - 2011, a Mid Year Analysis



Dears,

Hope the year 2011 treating you well and in the middle of all economic crisis, stock market crashes, hue cry about scams and corruptions we sometimes feel like lost in this madness and find hard to focus in our business. The most important opportunities always comes from crisis and its always the CRM which leads the game and make life little more better during such tough times. Let’s see how each of the market crm leaders and challengers doing in these times

.ENTERPRISE SUITE CRM : The Market

Spending on CRM software is expected to see the largest increase of all the application software markets worldwide, with the biggest areas of investment expected to include the online channel, software-as-a-service deployments, customer loyalty management, customer service applications, and mobile CRM solutions.

On-demand CRM offerings are, well, in demand, and not just from SMB clients. Those solutions are gaining traction among enterprise customers as well. According to a study by Nucleus Research, 63 percent of enterprises with more than 1,000 employees have adopted on-demand CRM technology. SaaS within the CRM industry is expected to exceed $4 billion in total software revenue in 2014, a figure that would constitute more than 32 percent of the total CRM market, according to Gartner.

The Leaders

Microsoft gained ground on Salesforce.com this year in functionality with its release of Dynamics CRM 2011. Analysts also liked the business software giant’s aggressive pricing strategy, But Microsoft isn’t out of the woods yet. A recent investment in an online application marketplace “still needs refinement, but it shows Microsoft’s recognition that a partner ecosystem and readily accessible add-ons to CRM are particularly important in the SaaS space.

NetSuite has always had “a stronger play in the SMB space than the large enterprises. In fact, the company’s score in company direction as well as its high mark in cost propelled Net Suite onto the leaderboard this year after being named as a One to Watch for the past two years.

NetSuite’s all-in-one integrated solution encompassing CRM, ERP, finance/accounting, and e-commerce, developed on a customer-centric information infrastructure, offers true value for a reasonable cost adding frosting to this cake is a workflow management module with point-and-click, rules-based workflows that enable line-of-business executives to automate, streamline, and improve common business processes.

Oracle captured the attention of analysts in depth of functionality, scoring highest in the functionalities. The company has “by far the richest feature set of any vendor in the market today.Without dispute, Oracle Siebel CRM continues to provide the most CRM functionality and support for the most complexity across sales, marketing, and service.. Oracle took a hit, though, in cost, which turned out to be a double-edged sword. You’re paying a high price for [Oracle], but you get what you pay for. However, that Big Red has started to offer aggressive pricing around its on-demand solutions.

While SAP’s scores in most categories were consistent with industry averages in the category, the company did grab the spotlight with its latest software release. The latest SAP CRM is very rich in mobile and analytics support.”

Salesforce.com, on top for three years in a row, led the pack once again in customer satisfaction as well as company direction. Those scores did not surprise the company “has built its business through real customer references and a very enthusiastic and collaborative user Community. Analysts agree that Salesforce.com has continued to expand its core CRM functionality and add-ons through the AppExchange, which is “an asset.” But, more importantly, the company has made all the right investments in social CRM, cloud functionality, and collaboration tools.

One to Watch

Amdocs is the choice this year, reprising a role it held in 2008 after having made the leaderboard in 2007. Several analysts were particularly impressed with the company’s direction during the past year or so. Amdocs offers a compelling vision for enterprise customer management through guided support of pragmatic business processes (such as revenue management, provisioning and fulfillment, billing, charging, and policy), reporting, analytics, and real-time alerts, coupled with anywhere/anytime/any touch point. This “illustrates a unique, industry-specific focus in this category,” and “has enabled Amdocs to develop a robust solution tailored to the requirements of the telecommunications and media sectors.”

MIDMARKET SUITE CRM :The Market

Major CRM vendors increasingly are targeting development efforts toward the midmarket, which hasn’t been as quick to adopt CRM solutions as some other industry segments have. Analysts indicate that the midmarket is a key revenue driver for CRM vendors and will see an implementation boom in the next three to five years.According to Forrester, the midmarket segment was on pace to account for 38 percent of CRM revenue last year, which comes from 54 percent of mid-sized companies. Among those businesses, CRM solutions delivered through a software-as-a-service model will continue to grow during the next five years, while spending for on-premises solutions will be flat. Forrester called SaaS solutions “highly probable” for companies with between 250 and 500 users.

The lines are blurring between midmarket and enterprise CRM, with vendors like Microsoft and Salesforce.com showing an ability to scale to support large enterprises as well as traditional enterprises.”

The Leaders

Microsoft, a fixture among the leaders in midmarket CRM, this year finished with a respectable score. The company’s Dynamics CRM offering, updated for 2011, continues to captivate analysts and customers because of its easy integration with other Microsoft Office products. Dynamics CRM also came with a lot more bells and whistles, but it benefited most from added functionality. In addition, the company’s new aggressive pricing strategy, growing partner ecosystem, readily available add-ons, and rising investments in an online app marketplace all position Microsoft to compete against Salesforce.com.

NetSuite continues to shine because of its “best-designed front- and back-office solution for the midmarket . The company put up impressive numbers in depth of functionality , customer satisfaction , and company direction , but many analysts saw it as not quite on the same level as some of the larger competitors. Although Net Suite doesn’t provide the breadth of CRM functionality that others do, it does deliver “real productivity gains for end users, particularly in mid-sized businesses.”

Oracle, usually associated with much larger-scale deployments, continues to excel in the midmarket, too. The company, which tied for the top score in depth of functionality with a 4.4 out of 5, was kept out of the overall top spot because of such issues as long deployment times, arduous training times, and other adoption challenges, all of which were reflected in the company’s low customer satisfaction score of 3.3. Analyst says the company suffered in other ways: “We’re not seeing a lot of Oracle CRM activity, largely because we believe customers are waiting to see what Fusion CRM looks like and when it will be available.” Oracle took the greatest hit, though, on cost, where it scored a mere 2.9, by far the lowest of any vendor in the category.

Salesforce.com, the hands-down winner again in midmarket CRM, has seen competition heat up this year from Microsoft. To stay competitive, Salesforce.com has continued to expand on its core CRM functionality while expanding its ecosystem of value-added CRM add-ons through the AppExchange marketplace..

One to Watch

RightNow Technologies, which has reached the leaderboard each of the past five years, slipped this year, scoring just slightly higher than the industry average in all criteria. The company’s offerings fell short in the larger CRM market largely because they are geared more toward customer self-service than they are toward broader CRM applications. Its company direction scores also fell for that same reason, and most of the moves RightNow has made in the past year have centered on its search and customer intent–gathering products

The race is very much on and Kicking the winner will always have it with whatever it takes.

Loving P&C


DC*



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