There are hundreds of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions on the market, despite a decade of aggressive consolidation. There are CRM software packages for large enterprises, for the small businesses, for different industries' requirements, and applications for sales, service, marketing, and more. This fragmented market leaves buyers with a big challenge as they evaluate CRM reviews to identify which product is right for their needs. We’ve written this buyer’s guide to help.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is CRM Software?
Application Categories
What Type of Buyer are You?

Market Trends To Understand
Benefits & Potential Issues
Recent Events in the Industry

What is CRM Software?

Customer relationship management is the discipline of managing an organization’s interactions with customers throughout the entire relationship. CRM software packages support these activities with applications for marketing, sales, and customer support. A well-implemented system will increase the number of customers for a company, increase the satisfaction of those customers, and grow revenue and profit in both absolute and per-customer measures. Below is a breakdown of the most popular CRM software applications.

Application Categories

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Before doing a CRM software comparison, you’ll need to assess what type of buyer you are. We believe over 90% of buyers fall into one of these four categories:

• Enterprise buyers. These buyers work for organizations that have invested in or are considering an enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite. In most cases, seamless integration is more important than specific features. However, these buyers benefit from the increasingly powerful solutions offered by ERP providers.

• Best-of-breed buyers. These buyers are focused on specific functions. For example, companies with a large field service force may focus on dispatching or scheduling or firms with a high-volume call center programs want strong agent scripting. Typically, these functional requirements will trump the need for seamless integration.

• Small business software buyers. These small businesses want to upgrade basic contact management like Outlook to support more sophisticated functions like SFA, customer support tickets, or marketing campaign management. They typically seek an easy-to-use system that supports all of their needs. They also might consider an open-source system due to a limited budget.

Trends You Should Understand

As you do a comparison of the best customer relationship management software for your needs, keep these trends in mind. How your vendor fits with these trends could have a big impact on their viability.

• Social CRM. The biggest trend is the convergence of customer relationship management software and social networking technologies - “social CRM.” Organizations are using social media tools like Twitter to address customer satisfaction issues and Facebook to friend prospects. Savvy firms mine social networks to find issues, then proactively address them.

• Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS offerings are commonplace. Salesforce pioneered this market and is, in fact, only available in the cloud. An outgrowth of SaaS is Platform as a Service (PaaS), which allows organizations to develop apps in the cloud, without investing in a data center. One of the main benefits of SaaS software is increased accessibility. SaaS systems can be accessed from multiple devices using either Mac or PC operating systems.

• Mobile apps. Mobile applications are becoming increasingly sophisticated and popular. Your users will care deeply about what devices are supported and their first impressions of mobile apps will impact adoption.

• Web self service. Customer self help, for both sales and support, allows customers to order products and correct issues without talking to human customer agents. This decreases per-customer costs on both sides of the transaction.

• ERP vendors as leaders. All of the major ERP vendors now have at least a decade of offering customer relationship management software, and their products have matured. Oracle stands out through its Siebel acquisition. SAP and Microsoft have both developed excellent solutions. Today, buyers can look to their ERP vendor for best-of-breed systems.

Benefits & Potential Issues

The key benefits of a system are increased sales and lower costs for marketing, sales support, and customer service. These are realized in several ways. Increased customer satisfaction extends customer contracts and leads to repeat sales and referrals. More effective delivery of marketing messages, better lead generation, and targeted sales efforts yield a faster sales cycle and better use of sales force resources. Automated customer support tools reduce costs for handling after sales.

The entry cost for customer relationship management software has never been lower considering the continually falling price of computer hardware and relatively low cost of subscribing to SaaS solutions. Meanwhile, the opportunity costs of failing to implement a system can be very high. We recommend that you look at some CRM software reviews to see what benefits and issues other users have experienced.

Recent Events You Should Know About

Customer relationship management (crm) software has come a long way since the ‘90s. While the technology still manages customer interactions, modern client management software integrates social networking tools, provides rich data and analytics and uses intuitive interfaces.

Today’s CRM applications are also highly customizable and integrate with a range of business operations tools. CRM software vendors range from highly-specialized niche providers to more diverse programs for businesses of all types and sizes.

The industry as a whole is also constantly evolving with new CRM solutions entering and dropping out of the market. Below are recent news items from the top CRM software providers. You should consider these and other market trends as you compare crm software shortlists.

• Sage North America - On April 19, Sage released several new mobile and e-marketing capabilities for Sage ACT! users. The new app-style Sage ACT! Connect turns your Android, iPhone or iPad into a virtual office. Users can access Sage ACT! contacts, activities and calendars from anywhere they use their device. Also new, the company released Sage ACT! Premium Mobile which offers the same tools as Sage ACT! Connect, plus added workgroup functionality. The last new tool--Sage E-marketing for ACT!--lets mobile device users distribute email marketing through social networking channels. Users can create beautiful email campaigns with access to a roster of professional templates.

• LeadMaster - LeadMaster recently announced a partnership with real estate lead conversion technology company, HomeStar Broker Solutions Corp. Under terms of the agreement, LeadMaster serves as the cloud computing engine for the HomeStar platform. The companies said the agreement will provide real estate professionals the best crm tools for their unique lead generation activities.

  “This relationship provides LeadMaster with a partner who can customize solutions and workflow automation specifically designed to dramatically improve conversion rates on Internet inquiries for real estate,” LeadMaster CEO Russell King said in a press release.

  Also this year, LeadMaster rolled out its enhanced marketing automation interface for email campaigns, lead nurturing and campaign reporting. The tool automatically scores prospects, sends them into the lead nurturing pipeline, assigns a sales person to the account and monitors activity.

• Maximizer CRM - Maximizer has set its sights on business owners with its new CRM 12 Entrepreneur Edition release earlier this year. Developers scoured contact management software reviews from small business owners and designed a system with those needs in mind. The company said the offering provides enhanced contact management capabilities for both small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. Similar to crm software programs for large businesses, the Entrepreneur edition provides tools for sales opportunity management, Outlook integration, scheduling, reporting and document management. The platform also improves time management, social media capabilities and sales pipeline analysis.

• Sage SalesLogix - Sage has formed a partnership with sales tax automation provider Avalara. The new Avalara Accountants Resource Center provides Sage Accountants Network (SAN) members access to educational resources on how to best service small businesses. Users can access white papers on the latest sales tax trends, webcasts, a tax form library and sales tax calculation tools. SAN is a membership group of accounting, bookkeeping and consulting professionals. The center provides members information and tools for leveraging software, support, training and marketing materials.

Have an opinion on this guide? Email the authors. We appreciate the feedback.