Thanks and welcome back to the CRM Products and Technology blog from Consona CRM. In my last post, I talked about the next evolution of the cycle, proactive support. This post, I am going to discuss something I think is very wrong in the CRM marketplace today. Specifically, I’ll be discussing the distinction between how analysts and press view our marketplace and why I think they are out of alignment.

This month CRM Magazine produced in its September, 2009 edition "The 2009 Market Leader Awards."  Obviously, this is an annual article and, in years past, I have found it both informative and well written. This year, however, I do not think they have actually adjusted to the market realities of CRM today.  In particular, I am referring to the categories chosen to recognize vendors.  They are as follows:

• Enterprise Suite CRM
• Midmarket Suite CRM
• Small-Business Suite CRM
• Sales Force Automation
• Incentive Management
• Marketing Solutions
• Business Intelligence
• Data Quality
• Open-source CRM
• Consultancies (firms dedicated to consulting on CRM deployments)

I find that there is a major oversight in not including Service and Support Solutions to the mixture and, for that matter, including Enterprise Suite CRM. According to Gartner Group, Customer Service and Support represents roughly 40% of the total market spend on CRM.  Further, these categories are very at odds with how Gartner categorizes vendors (which I happen to mostly agree with).  In the 2009 CRM vendor guide, Gartner's categories for vendors are as follows:

• CRM Suites for Small and Midsized Businesses
• Customer-Centric Web Strategy Vendors
• Web Analytics
• e-Service
• Marketing Automation
• SFA
• Customer Service, the Contact Center and Field Service
• CRM Analytics
• Sales Analytics
• Marketing Analytics
• Service Analytics
• Customer Experience Management
• MDM of Customer Data Systems
• CRM Business Process Outsourcers
• CRM Services Providers

In this categorization, Gartner offers a few points that are both contrary and important to CRM Magazine:

1. Enterprise CRM Suites are no longer in existence, or at enterprise level companies are not purchasing CRM related technology to serve multi-departmental purposes.
2. There is little distinction between Small Business and Midsized Business CRM, at least at the functional level.
3. Customer Service and Support software should be in a category all on its own.

From my perspective, I would take it even further. Based on Gartner's categorization, I offer the following opinions and questions:

1. Given market consolidation I don't think there should be a distinction between the different Customer Service and Support technologies. I think that e-Service and Service Analytics should be included in the mixture.
2. Is MDM a legitimate category for CRM vendors?  Looking at the vendors contained therein, they are mostly made up of middle-ware type technologies that serve to integrate customer data. Legitimate as a business problem, but shouldn't your vendors come with the whole solution, and not just a piece?
3. Customer-Centric Web Strategy Vendors are all about web marketing. This is great, but shouldn't these be included in the Marketing Automation category?

I guess from my perspective, CRM is still all about three categories of main capabilities, Marketing Automation, Sales Automation, and Customer Service and Support Automation. For Small or Midsized businesses these can be accomplished with some pretty good suites available in the market place, and that suites make sense when a business markets, sells and supports a few products or services. For enterprises, it's far more complicated—not because of feature needs, but rather due to operational and process related needs. And for both Gartner and CRM Magazine, I think these leading voices in our industry should reconsider their categorization and awards to reflect the realities of the CRM market.

That's my take. What's yours?  Comment here or feel free to e-mail me at tim.hines@consona.com.