The Best CRM Software and Solutions: The 2019 CRM Market Leader Awards
As you’ll see on the following pages, the forecast for CRM and related solutions continues to be bright. Artificial intelligence has moved from rumor to reality, and as one of our analysts, Sales Mastery’s Jim Dickie, notes elsewhere in the magazine, more and more sales leaders are starting to view AI as a necessity, not simply a nice-to-have. But companies don’t just want the most advanced technologies; they seek solutions that are easy to deploy and integrate with existing systems, that their employees will actually put to good use, and that deliver the most bang for the buck.
That’s where CRM’s Market Leader awards come in. Each year we dedicate one issue to helping our readers make sense of the ever-changing vendor landscape for sales and marketing technologies. Our panel of judges rated the leading CRM vendors in nine categories by their reputations for product functionality, customer satisfaction, company direction, and product costs. In each market segment, we recognize one category winner (the company with the highest overall score), four industry leaders, and one company to watch.
View the 2019 CRM Market Leaders in each category listed below:
CRM’s annual Market Leader Awards wouldn’t be possible without the contributions of our faithful industry analysts and consultants who evaluate the vendors based on the criteria that we set. This year’s panel includes the following: Jim Dickie, cofounder of CSO Insights and research fellow at Sales Mastery; Daniel Elman, research analyst at Nucleus Research; Michael Fauscette, chief research officer at G2 Crowd; Andy Hayler, president and CEO of the Information Difference; Brent Leary, cofounder and partner at CRM Essentials; Kate Leggett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research; John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research at the Technical Services Industry Association (TSIA); Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research; Rusty Warner, principal analyst at Forrester Research; and Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research.
CATEGORIES AND CRITERIA: CRM magazine’s 18th annual Market Leader awards rate the top five companies in nine categories, using a proprietary selection formula. (The overall award rating is based on a composite score of CRM revenue and analyst ratings for depth of functionality, company direction, customer satisfaction, and cost. Unlike software companies, the consultancies are rated according to ability to execute, company direction, customer satisfaction, and cost.) We present those companies alphabetically in the chart above, with the name of the category winner in orange boldface. On the pages that follow, in each category, we also cite one company worth watching for its potential to appear on that sector’s leaderboard next year.
REPUTATIONS FOR DEPTH OF FUNCTIONALITY, ABILITY TO EXECUTE, COMPANY DIRECTION, CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, AND COST ARE RATED ON A 5-POINT SCALE, WITH 5 BEING THE HIGHEST.
Buyer's Guide Companies Mentioned