The Best Enterprise CRM Suite: The 2024 CRM Industry Leader Awards

The Market

Research firm Statista Market Insights has valued the worldwide CRM software market’s revenue at $89.3 billion this year and expects it to reach $146.1 billion by 2029, growing at a compound annual rate of 10.4 percent. Precedence Research’s numbers are even more robust, with that firm expecting the CRM market to hit $248.1 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 13.5 percent. The long-term outlook for the CRM software market remains positive, with businesses continuing to recognize the importance of effective customer relationship management.

Key factors influencing the market’s growth include increasing customer demand for personalized experiences, a strong business desire to improve customer satisfaction and retention, and the shift toward remote work that has led to an increased demand for cloud-based CRM solutions that can be accessed from anywhere.

Statista also notes that the CRM software market is highly competitive, with several major players dominating the industry. However, there has been a recent trend toward smaller, niche CRM providers that offer specialized solutions for specific industries or business types. This trend is driven by the increasing demand for customized CRM solutions that meet the unique needs of individual businesses.

The Top Five

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 CRM package has always had broad industry appeal, but new additions have solidified its position atop the industry. “Copilots help with artificial intelligence enablement, and customers like the price-to-value ratio,” says Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research. “The addition of a [contact center-as-a-service] offering this year makes it even more attractive as an end-to-end solution,” adds Rebecca Wettemann, founder and CEO of Valoir. Kate Leggett, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, says Dynamics is “a uniquely unified suite of CRM, collaboration, productivity, and back-office applications that are built on the same platform and share the same data, insights, and tooling.”

Oracle is another longtime leader in the industry, with Wang calling it “a great end-to-end CX offering.” The company’s main strength, though, comes from its CRM connections to other business systems within the Oracle stable. “Oracle has a compelling CRM solution that is combined with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, AI, and Oracle’s full suite of applications to support data-driven customer interactions and specific CRM applications that leverage [enterprise resource planning], supply chain, and other data to make sales, marketing, and service more intelligent,” Wettemann says.

Pegasystems has stepped up its game in the past few years and now offers a top-of-the-line sales, marketing, and customer service suite that combines workflow automation, real-time decisioning, and a low-code platform, according to Leggett. Its Pega Infinity suite includes Pega Platform, Pega Customer Decision Hub, Pega Customer Service, and Pega Sales Automation, now with artificial intelligence and automation enhancements that empower organizations to optimize sales, service, marketing, and operations.

Salesforce is largely hailed as the industry leader, with John Ragsdale, vice president and research director at the Technology Services Industry Association, calling it “the default solution for the majority of enterprise tech companies due to its embedded analytics, the vast AppExchange ecosystem, and its continual investment and expansion of capabilities.” Leggett calls its offering “a complete portfolio of CRM suite applications for B2B and B2C engagement.” But some analysts have cautioned that Salesforce faces strong headwinds, particularly as its high prices have prompted some longtime customers to seek out cheaper alternatives.

Zoho is more known as a vendor of CRM systems for smaller firms, but its latest efforts have taken it upstream, and analysts have noticed. The company, Leggett says, “has a mature, product-led growth motion, with freemium editions for its smaller customers and a more traditional sales motion for larger ones.” Wettemann agrees, noting that “Zoho has the scale and capabilities, particularly with CRM for Everyone, to meet enterprise customer needs.”