Forrester Research (echoed by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc.) issued reports showing that nearly 40% of CRM sales are happening in the mid-market. This is an amazing shift since historically it is the big boys who implemented very complex CRM solutions (e.g. Siebel aka Oracle, Peoplesoft, and SAP). That all changed with Salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM 3.0 (which rocks).
One way that Salesforce.com "happened" was by turning CRM into a service rather than software. These days users can choose to buy and implement their own CRM (ala the big boys and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0) or they can pay as you go with SaaS (software as a service). Gartner Group (another one of those thinktanks) says that software as a service which is today a $6.3 billion business (WOW) will grow to $19.3 billion by 2011 (super wow). CRM is a big part of this move to SaaS.
If you are a mid market or even small player the guys to be considering are RightNow Technologies, Oracle Corp.'s Siebel CRM Professional edition, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand.
Microsoft has annoucned a version of their Dynamics CRM to run on the Office Live! platform which will give them a SaaS offering here, too. Check out the details here.
My current favorites in this space are Salesforce.com and Microsoft -- and I actually give the nod to Microsoft here. They've done a great job of integrating the CRM offer with Outlook (their email product) and Office. Since Microsoft Office is everywhere this gives them a big "look and feel" advantage. The learning curve for sales people (always busy with little interest in learning a new system) an easy way to start using it.
Have fun, guys. If you have any questions about the mid market CRM, partnering or any other topics of this blog drop me a cmoment.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
CRM for Google?
The times they are a changing. For years the only name in CRM that mattered was Siebel. It was complex, often difficult to integrate (Siebel grew by acquisition so many of its apps didn't play well together) but thanks to strong integration partners like Accenture it took over the CRM world.
Don't count Siebel out since it is now part of Oracle, but Salesforce.com (an online CRM solution) has taken the world by storm growing at a much faster rate than its competition. About a year ago Microsoft beefed up its CRM offer considerably and became a contender in the marketplace.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 provided the robust sales and marketing tools and tightly coupled the application to Microsoft Office including Outlook (the Microsoft email and contact management solution). Microsoft CRM users get tight integration to Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software and Microsoft Office Word word processing software. The product has taken off like wild fire with large companies adopting it as well as smaller firms.
But the CRM world is about to change yet again -- or perhaps I should say it HAS changed. Enter Google. Google Apps is the company's first foray to try and topple Microsoft's dominance in the office. There is a free version which includes a spreadsheet, word processor, calendar (sound familiar, Microsoft?) and for a mere $50 a year one can purchase the Premier edition which includes more online storage and support.
Third party vendors are offering very interesting add-ons to Google Apps and one is aimed squarely at Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and yes even Siebel.
CRMforGoogle is offered by by a small company named Etelos so this is not a Google offering, but it is still an initial and low cost foray into the market using a Google "look and feel."
Just when everyone thought the CRM market was maturing and only a few major players would survive it looks like a whole new ballgame. Let the moral of the story be that any CRM vendor wishing to survive and thrive needs to offer a wide variety of products that are easy to use, easy to find and ready when they are. Stay tuned.
Don't count Siebel out since it is now part of Oracle, but Salesforce.com (an online CRM solution) has taken the world by storm growing at a much faster rate than its competition. About a year ago Microsoft beefed up its CRM offer considerably and became a contender in the marketplace.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 provided the robust sales and marketing tools and tightly coupled the application to Microsoft Office including Outlook (the Microsoft email and contact management solution). Microsoft CRM users get tight integration to Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software and Microsoft Office Word word processing software. The product has taken off like wild fire with large companies adopting it as well as smaller firms.
But the CRM world is about to change yet again -- or perhaps I should say it HAS changed. Enter Google. Google Apps is the company's first foray to try and topple Microsoft's dominance in the office. There is a free version which includes a spreadsheet, word processor, calendar (sound familiar, Microsoft?) and for a mere $50 a year one can purchase the Premier edition which includes more online storage and support.
Third party vendors are offering very interesting add-ons to Google Apps and one is aimed squarely at Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and yes even Siebel.
CRMforGoogle is offered by by a small company named Etelos so this is not a Google offering, but it is still an initial and low cost foray into the market using a Google "look and feel."
Just when everyone thought the CRM market was maturing and only a few major players would survive it looks like a whole new ballgame. Let the moral of the story be that any CRM vendor wishing to survive and thrive needs to offer a wide variety of products that are easy to use, easy to find and ready when they are. Stay tuned.
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