70% of Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) applications have been custom built, which explains why the Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) market is fragmented, only slowly consolidating and characterised by lots of churn, said Gartner VP Ed Thompson at a 'vendor landscape' presentation at the analyst's 2008 Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) Summit in London. > Sales: software as a service (SaaS) salesforce automation (SFA), lead management, Web 2.0, ecommerce, sales performance management, pricing management and social networking. Source: http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133613
Gartner tracks some 300 out of an estimated 800 Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) vendors every year, 25-30 of which merge or are acquired during the course of the year, he added. These companies operate in more than 50 submarkets, with major areas including analytics, sales, marketing, field service, information infrastructure, customer service and ecommerce.
Thompson said that SAP and Oracle (Siebel) own about a quarter of the 'off the shelf' market each, but predicted that Microsoft, whose Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) offering is growing at 100% a year in terms of customer numbers, will be in the vendor top five when 2007 figures are published shortly.
In terms of the user experience, perhaps only 4% of customers can demonstrate a genuine return on investment from Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) initiatives.
In terms of the user experience, perhaps only 4% of customers can demonstrate a genuine return on investment (ROI) from Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) initiatives, mainly because most companies fail to benchmark projects and real success stories tend to be anecdotal.
Thompson said that hot areas of the main markets over the next three to five years will be:
> Customer service: collaborative and community intelligence, knowledge-enabled service resolution, feedback management and web self service.
> Marketing: web analytics and advert management, word of mouth and communications, customer datamining, marketing resource management and marketing performance measurement.
A hot technology ticket
Industries where Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) is a hot technology ticket at present are banking (retail and wholesale), wireless, wireline, high-tech industries, pharmaceuticals, travel and hospitality. 'Warm' (emerging) markets include utilities, insurance, automotive, consumer goods, medical equipment and the media.
Thompson explained that Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) spending correlates “very strongly” with GDP growth. The low ebb for the Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) market was in 2003, he said, when the most popular areas were mainly cost driven, such as self service and business process outsourcing (BPO).
As things stand, Gartner believes that Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) in 2009 will be about analytics, communities and mobile.
Thompson explained that any renewed focus of demand within cost-driven areas such as self-service and BPO would therefore be an indicator of a major economic downturn in the UK. At present those indicators are not strongly suggesting a sustained downturn.
As things stand, Gartner believes that Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) in 2009 will be about analytics, communities and mobile, he said.
Thompson went on to outline the 10 “most critical uncertainties” in the future of software development between now and 2016, and their relevance to the Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) market.
These included SaaS delivery; the shift of economic power and and skills to emerging ecnomies; the operational ability of organisations to absorb new technologies; the control shift from IT experts to users and consumers; the increasing virtualisation of business; new software licensing schemes; realising the promise of service-oriented architectures (SOA); universal fast and simple access to information (eg, the Google model); and open source displacing commercial software (in emerging economies in particular).
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