Update on Current CRM Market

The CRM marketplace continues to flourish as more and more companies are waking up to the realization that CRM is imperative to their success.

CRM applications are amongst the fastest growing applications in the market with a growth rate of 10% in 2006 and up to 17% in 2007. The strong overall growth is expected to continue for the next few years. Newer trends are evolving according to the ever changing needs of the marketplace.

However, not all of them are significant enough to have a massive impact on the market. Here we take a look at two recent trends that have made a difference to the working of CRM globally.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

• CRM software has taken a new form with software as a service or SaaS. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is growing like a wild fire.
• There are several reasons for this sudden spurt in SaaS.
• They are easy to use, easy to deploy, have a much lower risk rate when compared to client/server implementations and also have lower upfront costs.
• These benefits have not only redefined the rules for the SMB (small to medium sized business) market but also for the large enterprise market.
• It has been predicted that the SaaS phenomenon will lead to a 24% growth rate in the coming years.
• Top vendors like SAP and Microsoft have announced their SaaS CRM applications in the coming year.

Service Oriented Architecture ( SOA )

• CRM vendors have also started to release Service Oriented Architecture or SOA products.
• SOA is the new face of CRM and has features like Multi tenancy and combining resources throughout the enterprise.
• A lot of applications are bundled into a single suite making it easier for most companies to manage them.
• If a new business rule is implied, then it is simultaneously implied across the whole SOA platform.
• So you no longer have to keep buying software upgrades every year. You simply buy, use and reuse it again.
• There is a prediction that SOA based services will touch $34 billion by the year 2010.

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