Growth Continues in the CRM Market

Following a current trend in the CRM space, two more companies announced positive results from the end of last year. Both FrontRange Solutions and Baan posted encouraging gains, although they were achieved in different ways.

FrontRange, a relationship solutions provider whose products include Goldmine and Heat, released its financial earnings statement and posted a revenue total of $38.5 million for the last six months of 2002. Though this represents a decline of one percent in profitability from the same period last year, the company expressed its optimism about its growing customer base. According to FrontRange, its customer base grew to more than 130,000 companies worldwide in 2002.

"Building on our accomplishments in 2002, FrontRange Solutions will continue its success in 2003 by delivering highest value products with the lowest TCO that address customer-specific pain points," says Jerry Lumpkin, senior vice president marketing worldwide for FrontRange Solutions Inc. According to Lumpkin, FrontRange will introduce a series of new applications customized for vertical markets, continue to build its partner channel, and continue its expansion in global markets, including EMEA and APAC.

While FrontRange's announcement included revenues and customer wins, Baan's good news focused on its growing customer base. Baan reportedly has experienced a sharp spike in the number of new and prominent customers signing service agreements in the fourth quarter of last year. According to Baan, the company signed 44 new agreements with companies from all over the world. In addition to signing on such new customers as TransCor America and American IronHorse Motorcycle Company, Baan inked new deals with existing customers, including WalMart and Safelite.

Patric Timmerman, director marketing and product management for Baan CRM, explains that while Baan focuses on the manufacturing industry, the company's CRM solution, iBaan, is helping to bring in new customers both inside and outside of manufacturing vertical. "As a whole, iBaan for CRM represents ten percent to twenty percent of new customers," Timmerman says. "We are seeing significant traction within the Baan install base, as well as several new customers who are looking for a complete enterprise solution, initiated with CRM. An increasing percentage of deals, both for new and existing customers, is attributed to iBaan for CRM."