The Inside Story: How The Top 18 CRM Solutions Stack Up In 2012

The most frequent question I get every day is: “What is the best CRM technology solution for my company?” I recently teamed with five other Forrester analysts (Kate Leggett, Boris Evelson, Brian Walker, and Stephen Powers) to evaluate 18 leading CRM solutions against more than 400 product feature, platform, and market presence criteria. Here’s a sneak peek at our key findings from two new reports: The Forrester Wave™: Crm Suites For Large Organizations, Q3 2012 and The Forrester Wave™ For Midsized Organizations, Q3 2012.

■        CRM solutions are widely adopted and buyers plan to increase investment. In fact, 50% of the 556 North America and European large organizations we recently surveyed have implemented a CRM solution (a marketing, sales, or customer service application). An additional 23% have plans to adopt a CRM solution within the next 12 to 24 months.

■        Consolidation alters the vendor landscape.  In response to the demand for solutions that support the cross-channel, end-to-end customer journey that defines the quality of the experience an organization delivers; large CRM vendors such and Oracle, SAP, and  salesforce.com have acquired direct competitors or have snapped up companies in adjacent spaces to broaden their range of their offerings.

■        SaaS solutions are growing fastest. Buyers like the low upfront costs, usability, flexibility, and speed-to-value of software-as-a-solutions (SaaS).  Fast growing SaaS solutions include Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Oracle’s cloud CRM products — Oracle CRM On Demand, and Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service — and salesforce.com. The Sage CRM products for the midmarket (Sage SalesLogix and Sage CRM) have also been retooled to include on-demand options, and SugarCRM is also available in a variety of on-demand deployment configurations. However, total- cost-of -ownership, data integration, security, and solution governance remain as concerns in the minds of buyers within large organizations with complex requirements.

■        Oracle expands its collection of CRM solutions, but complexity increases. Oracle has a portfolio of strong CRM solutions. Although Oracle E-Business Suite CRM and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM are losing ground in the market, Oracle Siebel CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand remain leaders. Oracle added another leader to its stable with its acquisition of RightNow Technologies. However, the introduction of Oracle Fusion CRM as well as acquisitions in adjacent spaces such as commerce (ATG) and business intelligence solutions (Endeca) may leave buyers wondering about product road maps. In addition, they may be apprehensive about the level of investment each solution will receive and the technical integration among them.

■        SAP CRM has substantially increased its user base. The SAP CRM customer base has grown significantly in recent years (the company reports more than 7.5 million users), primarily within the large, predominantly B2B, SAP ERP installed base. This is a result of SAP investing for years in its core CRM solution, as well as offering new solution packaging, pricing, and implementation options to improve time-to-value. Strong integrations with related SAP solutions such as pricing and order management are attractive to organizations with an “all SAP” strategy. The CRM functionality of SAP Business-All-in- One provides an option for midsized companies.  The company also now offers an on-demand CRM solution (SAP Sales On Demand), but functionality is limited to sales force automation.

■        Several vendors benefit from increased BPM interest. Organizations can’t solve all customer interaction management problems with traditional data-centric CRM solutions alone. Rather, they need rules-based and more dynamic business process (BPM) solutions to orchestrate business processes across organizational silos. As a result, Pegasystems has been enjoying  growth with its focus on offering a “platform for customer centricity.” Sword Ciboodle is finding acceptance for supporting complex, customer-interaction-intensive use cases. CDC Software’s Pivotal CRM has gained a place in the market among companies that need highly customized user interfaces (UIs) and strong process management capabilities.

■        Six solutions offer breadth — but not depth — at lower price points. Solutions from FrontRange Solutions, Maximizer Software, NetSuite, Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix, and Sugar CRM have been traditionally targeted at the midsize and small organization market, but sometimes find a home in smaller divisions of large enterprises. These vendors offer a breadth (although not depth) of CRM capability at lower price points than the vendors who are focused chiefly on the needs of large enterprises. Netsuite stands out with strength in eCommerce capabilities. SugarCRM, with its commercial open source development approach, is increasingly catching the interest of larger organizations in addition to its traditional base of smaller companies and individuals.