The
majority of respondents (81%) in CRMindustry.com’s 2008
Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
survey are happy with the overall performance of their CRM
technology vendor. The research, conducted in November - December
2007, surveyed high-level CRM executives representing a range
of industries. The data gathered provides valuable insight
into the issues and challenges important to those responsible
for CRM in their organization.
Email
invitations to participate in the survey were sent to CRMindustry.com
members. Participants fall primarily into vice president/director/manager
categories and 40% of respondents report having 500 or more
employees in their organization. The 40 participating companies
span a range of industries, with the largest percentage —
37.5% — in the technology sector. A little over 34%
of responding organizations have CRM technology budgets of
more than $250,000 or more a year.
Key
Findings from the survey include:
- 53%
of respondents currently use an in-house CRM solution. The
top three factors that motivated choosing an in-house solution
are Cost (48%), Flexibility (41%) and Speed to Implementation
(41%).
-
22% of respondents currently use a hosted CRM solution.
The top three factors that motivated choosing an in-house
solution are Speed to Implementation (83%), Cost (56%) and
Scalability (44%)
-
25% of respondents currently use a combination of in-house
and hosted CRM solutions.
-
The majority of respondents (56%) did not perform any benchmarking
before choosing their CRM vendor. However, 66% did have
measurable goals in place to evaluate the success of their
CRM implementation.
-
58% report that their CRM implementation was done within
the estimated budget. Of those that went over budget, the
majority (59%) cited “the rollout took longer than
expected” as the primary cause.
-
56% indicated that their CRM implementation went over the
estimated time frame. Of those that went over their estimated
time, the majority (74%) also cited “the rollout took
longer than expected” as the primary issue.
-
Increased user productivity is the most relevant thing organizations
have achieved through implementing CRM technology, with
38% of respondents citing this factor.
The majority of organizations (66%) responding to the CRMindustry.com
survey plan to implement new CRM technology in 2008. This
growth supports current market forecasts. According to independent
market analyst Datamonitor, the market for CRM applications
continues to expand. In 2006, the global CRM software market
was worth just under US$3.6bn in license revenue alone. In
a recent report, Datamonitor predicts this will reach US$6.6bn
by year end 2012, growing by a compound annual growth rate
of 10.5%.
The
purchase and maintenance of CRM technology in organizations
is not rated as a higher priority relative to other IT spending,
at least according to 58% of respondents. However, there are
a good amount (42%) that do report that it gets a higher or
much higher priority in their organization.
Respondents
also report a high level of integration across the various departments
in their company. 63% responded "yes" when asked if
their CRM technology was implemented across the departments
in their company.
Companies
are also putting their CRM technology to good use in regards
to the products and services they sell. 59% report that their
organization currently uses customer input to influence the
creation and promotion of products and services.
|
