New data released by IDC (News - Alert) shows that the top 10 CRM application vendors captured nearly half of the $19.1 billion customer relationship management (CRM) software market in 2011. The top spot belongs to Oracle, which captured 11 percent of the market, followed by SAP and Salesforce.com (News - Alert), with 9.9 percent and 9.5 percent market shares, respectively.
The CRM software market posted 11.2 percent year-over-year growth, with segments with the strongest gains including marketing automation, sales automation and customer service. For the contact center market, however, IDC forecasts a slower, single-digit pace growth and result in a 3.4 percent drop of market share through 2016.
Social CRM showed no signs of slowing. Social media-enabled applications are expected to give the CRM market new momentum as companies rush to incorporate Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert) and other popular social networks into their CRM strategies, according to Mardy Wardley, program vice president of CRM applications for IDC.
"The CRM applications market is poised on the threshold of a transformation with legacy installations being transformed into socially-aware applications environments," she said in a company release. "An influx of new social vendors and acquisitions of social CRM applications providers by established vendors augmenting their offerings for rapid market entry is invigorating the market."
For small and medium businesses (SMBs), there is no shortage of business and productivity tools available from the cloud, and new products and services are constantly being introduced as enterprising developers come up with new, innovative ideas. These ideas include communication, accounting, general business, and CRM. CRM Software is a must-have for companies that want to keep in touch with their customers, and for very small companies, the most compelling CRM products live in the cloud.
Soffront is one example of a cloud CRM provider. It offers CRM software, platform and services to help companies become highly productive with fewer steps, less data entry, navigation and scrolling. Its CRM software includes sales force automation, marketing automation, customer support, helpdesk software, back office support, mobile CRM and cloud CRM pricing. Hosted CRM gives companies all the advantages of an enterprise CRM solution delivered over the Internet.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli