Which vendors will survive in the CRM market?

The vendors who will survive should have a value proposition with the following characteristics:

a) Verticalization: the way that companies sale, market and serve their customers are very different in every industry (e.g. Telco, CPG, Pharma, etc) each one has a very different issues and challenges to solve, so the CRM vendors who can provide a wide range of industry specialization will have a competitive advantage

b) Integration: CRM cannot be seen as an “stand alone” application, the CRM applications generates tons of valuable information for the company, so the CRM solutions should easily interact with other applications

c) Business Intelligence: I see every day that the CXO’s need good quality information for decision making, so the CRM applications that can provide BI functionality, easy to implement and maintain will exceed their competitors

d) SaaS: Large investments on CRM applications, infrastructure and operation are only affordable for a few companies, so CRM applications who can provide SaaS solutions with the other three characteristics (Verticalization, Integration, BI) will be the successful vendors

Finally, I guess in the medium term, we will see a consolidation of the CRM applications (as we saw with the ERP applications), so we will see several acquisitions in the short and medium term

A good indicator would be to look at yoy growth and market Share report from Gartner - April 2010. Microsoft and Salesforce.com seem to be at the top. Another good indicator would be The Forrester WaveTM: CRM Suites For Large Organizations, Q2 2010 report recently published. Both reports will also provide good indicator for which vendors are on path to crash or be purchased.

While not a true 'apples to apples' comparison to other pure CRM plays and certainly not all is spent on Dynamics CRM, it's still amazing to ponder that Microsoft's R&D budget (at $9B+) is more than Netsuite, Epicor, SF.com, Sage, Intuit, SAP, Google and Oracle combined! That said, its hard to imagine Microsoft will not stay a leader as they continue to execute their strategy to seamlessly integrate Outlook, CRM and ERP.

The CRM vendors that will survive are those that will offer CRM solutions that are emdede in other information systems used by the company availing the ability to analyze customer data and to use a combination of financial and customer based metrics for decision-making.

CRM done at a department level sub-optimizes the customer relationship. This is why CRM needs to be strategized at an enterprise level, even if a particular initiative is departmental in nature. Think strategically, invest tactically, and make sure everything fits into an enterprise wide strategy.

Survival is based on overcoming adversity. CRM must be customer experience focused.
Off loading to sources that can't understand english, have more speed bumps than bridges, and find ways to keep the solution hidden should realize that business takes place at the center of gravity....where the customer meets the supplier.