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Siebel, Oracle, SAP Top CRM Vendors In 2004Research firm IDC says Siebel was the top CRM vendor in 2004.
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
Siebel, Oracle and SAP were named the top three CRM vendors, respectively, in 2004, according to a new report issued by research firm IDC, titled "Worldwide CRM Applications 2004 Vendor Shares: Let the Games Begin."
Siebel Systems, Inc. was named the global market share leader on a revenue basis in the CRM applications market. According to IDC, Siebel Systems captured 10.7 percent of the worldwide CRM applications software market in 2004, compared to second-place Oracle's 6.8 percent market share. IDC's report is based on vendor-reported and observed trends, 2004 license and maintenance revenues, and in-depth vendor surveys and analysis. The firm examined 153 providers of "packaged software," which is defined as software that is commercially available through sale, lease, and rental or as a service, and included marketing automation, sales automation, customer service, and contact center applications.
The report found that the CRM sector as a whole grew a respectable 8 percent to $8.8 billion overall in 2004, and that the top three vendors, combined, still accounted for less than 25 percent of the market. North America continued as the unchallenged regional leader with 60 percent of the worldwide market, with Western Europe a distant second at 28.8 percent of worldwide revenue.
"This report confirms that CRM is a viable, growing market," said Bruce Cleveland, Senior Vice President, Products, Siebel Systems.
Mary Wardley, Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC, said in the report that Siebel has consistently strengthened and expanded its CRM applications, and says they're "on the right track" going forward.
"We had a couple of really down years in the CRM industry, then 2003 was hovering just slightly below break-even," Wardley told industry observer Marshall Lager. "Enthusiasm for CRM was a little overexuberant due to Y2K issues. IT departments were realizing they had a budget and needed to spend it on updating the organization, and CRM came online at just the right time to get on the schedule."
But, she tells Lager, "organizations didn't realize the extent of business process change that was required to properly implement CRM products and initiatives. They left well enough alone, since businesses won't flag something as a problem as long as they can get it done, no matter how inefficiently."
The report also said vendors providing products that address on demand, analytics, and business processes such as solving the lead-to-customer or order-to-cash flows will have an advantage in solving customer demands.
The report also found that on-demand products, such as those offered by salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies, have “generated significant revenue and will continue to become a greater factor in the market going forward."
Wardley told Lager that salesforce.com came along and made the on-demand space work, "but Siebel and the other leaders adapted. Siebel will be doing a lot more bridging of its enterprise offering with the on-demand component."
CRM implementations now often involve flexible business process flows versus discrete functional implementation, a trend IDC thinks will continue for the foreseeable future. And “analytic capabilities embedded within CRM applications” leads the top of the functionality “must have” list.
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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
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