The rise of social media and mobile is driving major growth in the CRM market, with spend doubling during 2011 and revenue hitting £12bn ($18bn), as brand owners splash the cash to update their systems.
The surge, revealed in the IDC Worldwide Semiannual CRM Applications Tracker, shows that three of the four functional markets – marketing, sales, and customer service – all witnessed double digit growth, while the fourth – contact centres – “should recover very strongly from a prior year decline of 3.6%”.
The Tracker monitors nearly 190 CRM vendors (global and regional) across a total of 49 countries around the world. Information provided includes biannual market size, vendor share, and forecast data.
“The global CRM applications market recorded a very strong performance in the first half of 2011, with revenues totalling $9.2bn,” said Wilvin Chee, associate vice president of Worldwide Software Trackers. “The semiannual year-on-year growth of 13.3% was a third stronger than what it was a year ago.”
The study goes on to predict that this will reach $18bn once data is gathered for the full year. In terms of geography, Americas and Europe will be registering at least double the growth of 2010.
“The CRM applications market experiences growth in an organic relationship with broader market conditions and organisational performance. Movements such as social and mobile are bringing consumer-like experience requirements to all aspects of end customer engagement with the companies with whom they conduct business,” said Mary Wardley, programme vice president of CRM applications. “As a result, we will see requirements for a modernisation of customer-facing processes, which will precipitate increased investment in supporting systems such as CRM applications.”
A total of 18 vendors (two more than during the first half of 2010) achieved revenues of more than $100 million revenue during the first half of 2011. Combined, these vendors captured a total market share of 63% with the remainder shared among 170 vendors and others.
Oracle remained the number one CRM vendor worldwide, growing above the market average and the only vendor that earned double-digit market share (13.2%) during the first half of 2011. Salesforce.com continued to impress with the best year-over-year growth (22.6%) among the top 10 vendors during the same period and moving into the number 2 position worldwide for the first time since IDC started tracking the market semiannually in 2008. Within the top 10, SAP and Nice Systems were the other vendors that had stronger than overall market growth.
The Tracker covers up to 49 nations in total. Annual five-year market forecasts for this Tracker are updated semiannually and include five-year annual market projections. Forecasts are available at worldwide, regional, and country levels.
