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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

CRM software vendors: leaders should pay attention..

..to rising stars SalesForce.com (ASP only) & AmDocs (combining billing and CRM solutions). Both are pushing hard. See the following Customer Relationship Management software vendors ranking by Gartner:


posted by Jeremy Fain at 3:21 AM

5 Comments:

  • Just a comment there since I work inside a Microsoft environment. You should probably see emerging in this chart Microsoft's CRM 3.0 (and newer versions) in the near future, since Bill Gates' firm has high ambitions around CRM. Demand for CRM is rapidly growing, and we are seing a lot of projects coming in.

    Seems like this means something big: after all companies are starting to focus on something they had been forgetting for some time (specially around the dot com era) customers are important!

    One of the big advantages of Microsoft CRM is of course its deep integration with all of the Office tools. For instance, it can be totaly run under Outlook with additionnal menu and functions, which turns out to be very useful. It has the advantage as well to be easily implemented inside corporations. Of course under that perspective nothing compared with SalesForce.com which has an unbelievable growth because SAS (software as a service) is still a brand new thing with tremendous potential. And that's probably why - you may not be aware of it - Microsoft has announced it will too develop CRM on ASP in the next couple of years.

    Something to be answered to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, who said a few months ago that 'Microsoft was still acting like the internet had never been invented'. Nowing that in Redmond people have never been very easy-going with competitors, a nice battle is probably on its way with CRM.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8/02/2006 03:48:00 PM  

  • Thanks for the accuracy of your remarks Hadrien. I had heard too that Microsoft was considering jumping into the hot CRM market as well as developing high-end Business Intelligence tools.

    The thing is that when it comes to CRM, Microsoft is still..a start-up compared to the main players.

    But we all know that the company based in Redmond, Washington, never enters a market without nourishing the ambition of leading this market.

    Your comment appears then all the more relevant.

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 8/02/2006 05:11:00 PM  

  • Adendum (in French, sorry again):
    - Laurent Cornu, an IBM France senior executive talks about CRM: http://www.zdnet.fr/entreprise/commercial-marketing/relation-client/0,50007171,39362455,00.htm
    - On Microsoft Dynamics:
    http://www.zdnet.fr/entreprise/commercial-marketing/relation-client/0,50007171,39362395,00.htm
    http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/0,39040745,39362107,00.htm

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 8/03/2006 01:35:00 PM  

  • If you take a loog at latest Gartner's magic quadrants (or what the f* they are) and Forrester's Wave (i think), Microsoft's CRM is nowhere near the top. It's still mostly just the five top players as mentioned in Jeremy's chart.

    By Blogger Kari, at 8/03/2006 05:22:00 PM  

  • True Kari, Microsoft is so far an insignificant player in the CRM business. However, it has recently acquired 2 companies, integrated business intelligence and CRM offices to create Microsoft Dynamics (used to be called Microsoft Business Solutions), made sure analytical tools will be compatible with MS office, and is targeting with a software on demand service the SME market.

    No doubt Microsoft has what it takes to become a leading player in the business intelligence & CRM world.

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 8/03/2006 05:45:00 PM  

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