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Vendor Landscape Plus: CRM Suites for Large Enterprises

Select and deploy an enterprise-class CRM suite that provides a 360-degree view of your customers across marketing, sales, and customer service processes.

Last Revised: February 29, 2012

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Your Challenge

  • Large organizations need a solution that will give them a unified view of their customers across the three major interaction domains: marketing, sales, and customer service. Despite the importance of creating a “single face” for the customer, efforts in these three domains are rarely harmonized.
  • The adoption of a CRM suite has become complicated by a rising number of best-of-breed point solutions in the three domains. Taking the wrong approach can lead to either wasted investments or insufficient functionality. IT managers need to consider which product combination will provide the greatest value.
    • Suite solutions are most appropriate for enterprises that require collaboration between departments, and have slightly more complex needs.
    • The larger and more complex enterprises will require a CRM Suite combined with best-of-breed point solutions.
  • Integrating across disparate systems is painful – an integrated suite addresses the customer lifecycle the best. The larger the enterprise and the more complex the needs are, the more this value proposition resonates.

Our Advice

Critical Insight
  • The CRM market is mature. On traditional feature sets such as account and contact management, workflow tools, and sales management, there is relatively little product differentiation.
  • SaaS offerings are the norm, not the exception. The majority of vendors profiled by Info-Tech offer hosted deployment models. Some prominent vendors (such as Salesforce.com) forego on-premise deployments altogether.
  • Social and mobile feature sets are weak. Despite important social and mobile trends in the consumer space, most CRM vendors are struggling to keep up.
    Impact and Result
    • Understand the benefits of using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Suite, as well as identify best practices for a successful CRM implementation.
    • Plan for and select a CRM Suite that supports your business’s domains, customer segments, and channel strategy.
    • Save time and money by using Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape to compare and contrast the major CRM vendors, and then create a shortlist of the most appropriate vendors.
    • Use Info-Tech’s CRM Suite RFP Template, Evaluation and RFP Scoring Tool, and Demonstration Script to gather vendor and product information, objectively score the responses, and conduct vendor demonstrations, in order to select the right product.

    Get to Action

    1. Assess the need for a CRM suite and narrow down a list of CRM vendors

      Create a strong list of vendor candidates.

    2. Compare leading vendors and develop a shortlist

      Narrow the leading vendors down to the most appropriate few.

    3. Contrast and evaluate a shortlist of vendors

      Select the right CRM Suite vendor.

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    Design a Customer Service Strategy that Serves the Social Customer

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    Leverage Social Media for Enhanced Customer Interaction

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    Tags

    customer service, IVR, Oracle, SAP, mobile, Windows, telephony, BlackBerry, Email, CRM, Salesforce.com, IOS, customer relationship management, Dynamics, knowledgebase, knowledge management, marketing, Infor, Android, SalesLogix, Sage, chat, sales, web portals, onyx, social media, iPad, HTML5, Infor ePiphany, consona, resolution workflow, activity management, cdc pivotal, siebel microsoft

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    Select and deploy an enterprise-class CRM suite that provides a 360-degree view of your customers across marketing, sales, and customer service processes.

    Companies Who Helped

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    Solution Road Map

    Other Solution Sets in CRM Suites

    1. Build a Customer Relationship Management Strategy
      Understand CRM best practices and create a strategy for success.
    2. Vendor Landscape: CRM Suites for Small Enterprises
      Your small enterprise still needs all the commodity features, now with a social flair.
    3. Vendor Landscape: CRM Suites for Large Enterprises
      Social media integration can make or break a vendor's feature set.
    View the full Solution Road Map