Time for a CRM Renaissance?

Principia on August 01, 2006

A number of observers, including this commentator, point to several market trends and recent research reports as evidence of a "rebirth" of customer relationship management. According to a Gartner survey, 76 percent of executives say customer strategy is more important now than it was three years ago. AMR Research projects that businesses will spend $16 billion on CRM applications by 2009, up from some $11 billion in 2004. Two of the forces driving this renaissance are the consolidation efforts of major CRM players, most notably Oracle and SAP, and the meteoric rise of on-demand CRM apps. According to the Gartner study, companies are placing more emphasis on underlying business cases for their CRM initiatives and focusing on customer satisfaction in addition to cost reduction. New metrics to measure the value of CRM, including Fred Reichheld's "net promoter" scale, are emerging.