CRM systems today are no longer just about sales force automation. Leading CRM suite providers make customer service operations more efficient and improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. They also provide a deeper understanding of customer needs by leveraging data across multiple touchpoints and use those insights to personalize marketing communication. This improves customer engagement, increases website traffic, and enhances sales performance.
These are some of the key findings from Avasant’s Customer Relationship Management Suites 2022 RadarView™, a comprehensive study of today’s CRM platform vendors. It takes a close look at the leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers in this market.
The report also addresses the need for enterprises to accelerate their digital journeys, embrace the cloud, and identify the right CRM vendor. It highlights key trends in the CRM market and Avasant’s viewpoint on the market’s direction over the next 12 to 18 months.
Avasant evaluated 16 vendors across three dimensions: product maturity, enterprise adaptability, and innovation road map. Of these, 11 were recognized as having brought the most value to the market over the past 12 months.
The RadarView recognizes platform providers in four categories:
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- Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP
- Innovators: HubSpot and Zoho
- Disruptors: Pega, SugarCRM, and Zendesk
- Challengers: Creatio and CRMNEXT
The following figure from the full report illustrates these categories:
“When people hear the term CRM, they usually think about systems to track leads and manage the sales funnel,” said Frank Scavo, president of Avasant Research. “That’s still important, but our research shows that nearly half of the organizations adopt CRM to improve customer service, with marketing automation not far behind.”
The full report provides a number of findings and recommendations, including the following:
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- Enterprises are increasingly adopting CRM solutions to make customer service operations more efficient, increase sales team productivity with sales force automation, improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and achieve deeper customer insights through analytics.
- CRM suites enable organizations to offer personalization in marketing communication that helps improve customer engagement, increase website traffic, and enhance sales performance.
- CRM platform vendors are undertaking new initiatives such as in-house development, codevelopment with partners, and integration of white-label solutions to add automation into CRM platforms.
- CRM platform vendors are also offering low-code/no-code solutions to help accelerate the development of customizations and integration with third-party applications, enabling enterprises to get a faster return on their investment in CRM.
“There is a lot of innovation today in the CRM marketplace,” said Gaurav Dewan, associate research director with Avasant. “Much of it is around automation, such as in lead qualification and scoring and giving customers better self-service options.”
The full report also features RadarView profiles of the 11 vendors, including their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting enterprises with CRM suite adoption.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of the full Customer Relationship Management Suites 2022 RadarView™ (click for pricing).
