2008 study – Trends in CRM

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.

Originally published in CRMindustry.com