I read this morning that Datamonitor released a report today that says that the analytical CRM market will increase from $2.3 billion this year to $3 billion in 2009. By itself, this isn't exactly eye-popping growth but it is indicative of the trend toward the improvement of the customer experience - albeit on the more conservative side. Datamonitor defines aCRM as "the active collection, concentration and analysis of data gathered about the customer and his interactions with the business. It represents the next, logical step in this development path through utilization of customer data held within the enterprise. This analysis is then used to generate value, both for the enterprise and the enterprise's customers. It encompasses cultural change at every level as part of the wider CRM project: the creation of a customer focused business."
Critical to the statement is not the dollar value of the marketplace which may or may not be accurate, but what they see as the value of the analysis - the cultural change at every level to create a customer focused business. This is an important insight about a marketplace that is increasingly in need of information about the customer - each and every day, the customers are becoming more demanding of that personal experience to keep them addicted to you. That means that more and more information and more importantly, figuring out what that information means - customer by customer - is essential to the success of the customer experience.
As if to clarify this, IDC came out with a report on the robustness of the CRM market today also. In 2004, according to IDC, the CRM applications/services market generated $8.8 billion in revenue and is only looking better and better for the future. They stated that the reason was that the hosted providers like salesforce.com generated the impetus. But top of the functionality want list? Analytic CRM, bearing out the Datamonitor report.
Further confirmation that the sea change in CRM is beginning to reach the shores.
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