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.
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