Although there has been quite a bit of frustration with customer management software over the last year, an AMR Research study suggests the market is growing at a solid 8 percent annual rate. This growth is being attributed to SaaS, which allows potential customers to support Sales Force Automation, Customer Relationship Management and other related applications without having to absorb the massively expensive costs associated with traditional site license-based enterprise software deployments. Still, AMR Research's Rob Bois notes in CIO Magazine that the key to success lies beyond fielding new technology models. SaaS does not remove the need to engineer well thought-out business processes and implement effective change management strategies. Companies that skip these critical business steps will be victims of the same frustrations that dogged CRM implementers at the beginning of the decade. The only difference is that the up-front costs will be lower. The study noted that the top three vendors in the market include SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com. While Salesforce.com continues to hold a third place position, the report notes that the company is taking away market share from its larger competitors.
For more on SaaS driving customer management software sales:
- check out the findings in CIO Magazine. Article
