Vendor Landscape Plus: CRM Suites for Small Enterprises
Select and deploy a CRM suite that synchronizes marketing, sales, and customer service to provide a comprehensive view of the customer.
- SMBs must assess their needs by reviewing the volume and complexity of their customer interactions, as well as the functionality provided by their current solutions. If support is required by a specific business domain (sales, marketing, or customer service), SMBs should consider point solution alternatives. They should not overlook the low cost products that may fulfill their customer relationship needs, such as Contact Modules and ERPs and Accounting and finance suites.
- Many SMBs have failed to define a formal strategy for Customer Relationship Management. Despite the importance of creating a “single face” for the customer, efforts in the three domains are rarely harmonized. Integration is critical across process domains. Social media is a particular pain point: marketing often leads social initiatives, but neglects to involve stakeholders in sales and customer service.
- The CRM adoption scenario becomes complicated by a rising number of best-of-breed point solutions in the three domains. For example, should SMBs adopt a standalone Customer Service Management (CSM) Suite, or should they use the integrated customer service module of their CRM Suite? Taking the wrong approach to the CRM vs. best-of-breed solution can lead to either wasted investments or insufficient functionality. IT managers are wondering “what product combination will provide the most value?”
- Integrating across disparate systems is painful – an integrated suite addresses the customer lifecycle the best.
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 CRM Suite, as well as identify best practices for a successful CRM implementation.
- Plan for and select a CRM Suite that supports your business 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, RFP Scoring Tool, and Demo Script to gather vendor and product information, objectively score the responses, and conduct vendor demonstrations, in order to select the right product.
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Talk to an Analyst
Our analyst calls are focused on helping our members use the research we produce, and our experts will guide you to successful project completion.
Book an Analyst Call on This Topic
You can start as early as tomorrow morning. Our analysts will explain the process during your first call.
Get Advice From a Subject Matter Expert
Each call will focus on explaining the material and helping you to plan your project, interpret and analyze the results of each project step, and set the direction for your next project step.
Unlock Sample Research