2013 CRM Market Share Update: 40% Of CRM Systems Sold Are SaaS-Based

Last year, four out of every ten CRM systems sold were SaaS-based, and the trend is accelerating.

In the recent Gartner report  Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2012 published April 18, 2013 the authors provide insights into why the worldwide CRM market experienced 12% growth in 2012, three times the average of all enterprise software categories.  Gartner cites demand they are seeing from their enterprise clients for CRM systems that can help acquire customers, analyze and act on customer behaviors, and increase all-channel management performance.  Big data inquiries are also increasing in CRM, driven by the interest enterprise clients have in getting more value from social network data and interactions.

Key take-aways from the report include the following:

• The CRM worldwide market grew from $16B to $18B attaining a 12.5% growth rate from 2011 to 2012.

• 80% of all CRM software in 2012 was sold in North America and Western Europe.    North America CRM sales grew 16.6% from 2011 to 2012.  The highest growth regions of CRM sales between 2011 to 2012 included Greater China (26.9%) and Latin America (24.3%).

• Salesforce.com is the world’s leading CRM software vendor with 14% market share in 2012 ($2.5B in sales), surpassing SAP (12.9%, $2.3B in sales), Oracle (11.1%, 2.01B in sales), Microsoft (6.3%, $1.1B in sales), IBM (3.6%, $649M in sales) and all others.  The top ten vendors worldwide generated $10.9B in sales alone in 2012.

• Worldwide CRM software spending by subsegment shows Customer Service and Support leading all categories with 36.8% of all spending in 2012 ($6.6B), followed by CRM Sales (26.3%, $4.7B), Marketing (includes marketing automation) (20%, $3.6B) and e-commerce (16.9%, $3B).   The following chart shows the distribution of revenue by category:

• 40% of all CRM software sold in 2012 worldwide was SaaS-based.  Gartner states that they are seeing their enterprise clients seek out easier-to-deploy CRM systems compared to on-premise alternatives.  The report states that many enterprises are now replacing their legacy systems with SaaS-based CRM systems as well.  Enterprise clients also report that SaaS-based CRM systems are delivering net-new applications that deliver complementary functionality not possible with legacy and previous-generation CRM platforms.

• Ten fastest growing CRM vendors as measured in revenue Annual Growth Rate (AGR) in 2012 include Zoho (81.2%), Hybris (78.6%), Teradata (70.4%), Bazaarvoice (56.2%), Marketo (54.3%), Kana (44.2%), Demandware (43.9%), IBM (39.4%), Technology One (37.1%) and Neolane (36%).

• Communications, media and IT services were the biggest spenders on CRM in 2012 due to their call center requirements.  Manufacturing including Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) was second, and banking & securities were third.