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CRM firm taps into networkingJul 28, 2010 (Bangkok Post - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Tapping the growth in social networking and the mobility trend, global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) vendors have launched new features to support social CRM and expand new markets through an on-demand model. Increased use of social network sites is driving social marketing and development of customer relationship management software linked with the social sites supporting Social CRM extends ecosystem of CRM software, according to Sage CRM, General Manager, Lorcan Malone. According to Gartner Inc, this year the CRM market will reach $10 billion (320 billion baht), a 5.5 percent growth from 2009, and will grow by 6.7 percent in 2012. The industry grew by only one percent due to economic downturn. Malone said that in the past few years there has been single-digital growth, and that the market experienced two-digit growth before the crisis. However, social network sites and mobility will make CRM software become critical systems as front office hubs to pull data from internal and external organisations and these technologies are growth drivers of the industry. Recently, the Sage CRM v7 was introduced through Sundae Solutions, which is Sage CRM's partner in Thailand. The new version supports 360-degree access view of customer's data both from internal organisation and data from social media such as customer comments posted on social sites. Moreover, the software also supports small and medium enterprises, allowing business configuration with specific niches and connections with other applications, especially with social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Meanwhile Sundae Solutions helps to develop connection with Facebook. The software enables mobile working in offline and online modes through notebooks and smart phones ranging from Windows Mobile, iPhones, BlackBerries, and Android OS through support field service and sales. Moreover, the company also provides various options to customers ranging from on-premise, on-demand and the latest CRM software Sage SalesLogix on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure cloud service. Last year, Sage CRM Solutions had sales of $95.5 million. Navik Numsiang, Managing Director of Sundae Solutions, said that the company helps Sage customers to implement and develop adding on applications on top of Sage CRM to support email marketing, social media marketing and online customer services. The uncertain economic situation and highly competitive market are forcing customers to use CRM as strategic tools supporting customers' changing behaviour and use of social websites. This is good positive investment from new customers and it expects to its CRM business to grow by around 30 percent this year. Wisit Phaisalsiriwat, Oracle Corporation (Thailand)'s Country Manager Applications, said the company has introduced the new CRM Release 17 , the latest release of Oracle's on-demand service with forecasting and analytic capabilities to gain more actionable insight and increase productivity. It offers CRM software as a service model to small businesses start from five employees that can log-in to use the system and pay $70 (2,300 baht) per user per month. This option reduces deployment time from several months down to a few weeks and the estimated potential customer base of around 30,00-40,000 organisations in fields as diverse as insurance, life sciences, computing and chemicals. To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, Bangkok Post, Thailand Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544). |