Report Ranks Top 10 CRM Vendors

The customer relationship management (CRM) market is experiencing a sort of renaissance that was last seen in the go-go days of the dotcom era. That’s according to “The Customer Management Market Sizing Report, 2007-2012,” a new CRM report from AMR Research.

In the report, AMR analysts Rob Bois, Marianne D’Aquila and Karen Carter note that the customer management software market returned to double-digit growth rates “that haven’t been seen since the dotcom boom.”

“Fueled by renewed interest in customer experience management,” notes the report, “heightened accountability and heavy development investments from the vendors, the CRM acronym has become fashionable again.”

Vendors’ 2007 CRM revenue totaled more than $14 billion, which was an “impressive” 12 percent growth rate over 2006, according to the report. (For a look at one company’s CRM system selection, see “Inside Pitney Bowes Choice for a Mobile CRM/ERP Solution.”)

“This represents the strongest year-over-year growth rate for the segment since 2000, when the customer management market was still in hyper-growth,” write the analysts. “The 2007 growth rate also marked a plateau for the consolidation that has suppressed growth over the past several years, indicating a new level of maturity for the customer management software market.” (For an alternative take on CRM, see “Open Source CRM Delivers More Control, Less Cost.”)

The Top 10 CRM Vendors in 2007

These software vendors own the top 10 spots in AMR Research’s customer management market.

The AMR analysts point out that the top 20 vendors realized a more robust growth rate (28 percent) than the overall average (12 percent).

The Rich Get Richer

All the recent enterprise software market consolidation has solidified the top players’ positions: The top five CRM vendors now own 46 percent of the entire market share, which is up from a 40 percent share in 2006 and a less than 30 percent share in 2005, notes the report. (Also see “The Top Five Supply Chain Management Vendors.”)

“Clearly, the heavyweights set the pace for the market,” write the AMR analysts, “and with economic uncertainty entering the picture in 2008, the trend will only accelerate.”

Oracle “managed to get back on its feet following a lackluster 2006 when the vendor slowed down to digest the acquisition of Siebel,” notes the report. And the gap between Oracle and SAP did lessen in 2007.

For its part, SAP posted another “strong year” for customer management, retaining a commanding 19 percent overall market share, notes the report. At the same time, Salesforce.com surpassed a million customers and “continues its quest to $1 billion by posting an impressive 51 percent organic growth rate.” (For more on SaaS, see “Five Best Practices for Implementing SaaS CRM.”)

Though it’s not a household name like Oracle or even SAP, the report states that Cegidim Dendrite moved into fourth place after merging midway through the year. “Verint shot up the list after acquiring Witness Systems,” write the analysts, “demonstrating that even more mature segments such as contact center applications are not immune to continued consolidation.”

In addition, the report notes enterprise software vendors’ growing interest in CRM and customer experience management applications, “a trend which will likely accelerate with the world’s biggest software companies putting heavy emphasis on their CRM suites” in the future, notes the report.

New and enhanced products were everywhere in 2007: SAP launched SAP CRM 2007 “with a completely revamped user interface and new functionality designed to appeal to some of its largest customers in the consumer products industry,” write the analysts.

Oracle launched Oracle Siebel CRM 8.0, which the report notes is one of the largest development efforts in the history of the Siebel product line. And Microsoft launched its Dynamics CRM 4.0 suite, “adding an entirely new multitenancy architecture to enable software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments,” write the AMR analysts. Microsoft continues to accelerate 1,000-plus seat deals, “indicating Microsoft is succeeding in pushing CRM into the enterprise as well as the small and midsize business (SMB) segment.”

“So perhaps it comes as no surprise,” write the AMR analysts, “that the software giants SAP, Oracle and Microsoft recorded 20 percent, 39 percent and 39 percent customer management growth rates, respectively.”