A new survey indicates that customer relationship management (CRM) software will have the largest spending increase this year among all types of software. The survey, by industry research firm Gartner, said 42 percent of respondents expect to increase their CRM spending from 2010.
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About 39 percent will increase outlays for office suites, and 36 percent for enterprise resource planning. The survey was conducted among 1,500 heads of IT departments in 40 countries through last July. The questions were oriented toward actual budgets for last year and projections for 2011.
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Opportunities in ‘Greenfields’
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The growing increase in CRM spending comes as spending on application software in general is rising a projected 31 percent this year. The largest increase is taking place in the Asia/Pacific region, which is growing 37 percent. Latin America application spending is growing by 35 percent, and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region by 27 percent.
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Gartner describes both Latin America and Asia/Pacific as greenfields with the greatest sales opportunities.
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Hai Hong Swinehart, a Gartner research analyst, said key areas for general software investment include the online channel; software as a service (SaaS) deployments; and technologies that enable customer loyalty management, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and levels of customer service that are more targeted.
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Software application vendors should continue to build, fund and invest in software sales and marketing programs as the market is recovering, Swinehart said. He added that a market downturn and its aftermath are disrupters that create great marketing and sales opportunities if a company has the right products, market programs, and funding.
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Social CRM
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For CRM buyers, Swinehart said, spending is focusing on customer retention and ways to enhance the customer experience, and there is increasing interest in technologies that encourage development of customer communities and social networks.
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Gartner said SaaS within the CRM industry could top $4 billion in revenue…