Spend soars as firms flock to CRM

Spend on CRM will grow faster than for any other sector of business software over the next five years, according to Gartner, as brand owners dig deep to build long-term customer relationships.
In Q1, the technology research firm predicted the CRM market would be worth $20.6bn (£13.5bn) by 2017, but now it claims it will be worth an extra $16.5bn (£10.8bn), totalling $37.1bn (£24.3bn). And its latest market study, Gartner Forecast: Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2012-2017, 2Q13 Update, predicts CRM will grow faster than any other area of business software.
It will even eclipse enterprise resource planning (ERP) in worldwide market size.
The increase flies in the face of industry “experts”, who back in the day predicted CRM was simply a fad and had been invented by software vendors to exploit clients’ desire to keep in contact with their customers.
According to the report, CRM will grow 15.1% year on year over the period, a rate three times higher than all enterprise software segments on average, as companies strive to acquire more business and serve existing customers better.
Meanwhile, spend on data integration and data quality tools is projected to grow from $4bn in 2013 to $6bn in 2017, attaining a year-on-year rise in the forecast period of 10.3%.
For this year alone, the total worldwide spend on so-called “enterprise software” has been revised up, from $279bn in its Q1 study to $304bn in the latest forecast. Gartner claims stronger demand for CRM, supply chain management and security are leading to accelerating market growth.

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