Customer relationship management (CRM) has evolved over the years and is now considered a must-have business tool to help increase operating efficiency. In a recent report, Transparency Market Research, a market intelligence company, indicates that the CRM market does appear to be picking up on all fronts after a slow growth rate in 2011.

In any mature market, growth does flatten and the CRM software segment is no exception. In developed markets, because of market saturation, slower growth has been predicted for CRM by 2018. In contrast, new players in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to experience double digit growth for the same period.

Overall, the CRM software segment will result in an increasing deployment of software solutions with SaaS (News - Alert), customer service applications, sales automation, social media and others. As technology evolves, it is expected to provide an impetus for the growth of cloud or software as a service (SaaS) CRM systems.

 Emerging technologies like cloud computing will also reduce the deployment cost, which will also boost the demand for cloud-based services.

All this means that there will be increasing competition among various industries. Players will hence be forced to invest more in customer retention, which will trigger the growth of this market.

With e-commerce gaining ground, CRM software is bound to act as a key differentiator for different industry players.

Looking at how the players are placed in the CRM industry, SAP (News - Alert) AG is head and shoulders above the others with 20 percent of global market share. Salesforce.com and Oracle also emerged strongly as strong contenders for the top positions. Microsoft (News - Alert), IBM and others are key players in the CRM industry.

The report analyzes the market depending on its market segments, major geographies and current market trends and provides market projections for the coming years.