CRM Market Poised For Slow Growth

Meta Group announced today the results of a Web poll that indicates the CRM market is poised for a mild rebound. According to the poll, 75 percent of the organizations queried will spend the same or more on CRM in the next 12 months. The remaining 25 percent is expecting to spend less. Elizabeth Roche, vice president with Enterprise Application Strategies at Meta Group, could not break out the percentage of those organizations that will spend more on CRM versus the same, but she says a large percentage of those polled will increase CRM spending over the next 12 months. "The magnitude of organizations on the positive-spending curve versus the negative-spending curve was surprising," Roche says. "We hadn't anticipated such a positive outlook." Meta Group started its weekly Web polls, called Quick Polls, around the time of the Oracle, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards merger triangle last month to get a sense of how industry consolidation might effect organizations' willingness to invest in CRM. "Our view, given the situation today, is that there will be enterprises concerned about putting all their eggs in one basket by relying too heavily on a technology vendor." However, the poll indicates organizations are not stirred by industry consolidation. Those that responded, she says, are changing the way they buy CRM solutions and investing their CRM dollars in quick-win point solutions as opposed to large-scale, multimillion-dollar implementations. "What the spending looks like now is, investments in point solutions or pieces of a footprint that are really focused on quick wins. We're calling it tactical strategies." Part of that tactical strategy, she adds, is having a business plan in place prior to the project that outlines how all of the business solutions will fit together. Then start with one component, such as the sales piece, and move on to the next project when the first one is finished. The Quick Poll queried between 500 and 600 professionals closely tied to CRM, Roche says. Although Meta Group cannot accurately identify the titles and backgrounds of respondents (whether they have a business or IT focus), Roche says Meta's Web site attracts global 2,000 professionals, typically in IT, such as analysts, developers, and CIOs, as well as a "fair amount of business people with regard to CRM." Despite the unscientific nature of Web polls, Roche adds the results are "indicative of other research and other channels we're getting feedback from."