CRM market trends: Top five headlines in 2007

1. Top 15 CRM vendors, emerging trends revealed: ISM released its annual rankings of the top vendors for small and midsized business (SMB) and enterprise CRM in March, and while the names are familiar, the market is seeing change. According to the report by the Bethesda, Md.-based consultancy, analytical tools, mobile offerings and Software as a Service (SaaS) trends are driving changes.

2. CRM software rankings tell a familiar tale: Siebel and SAP remain the leading enterprise CRM products, but midmarket players like Salesforce.com, RightNow and Microsoft are gaining ground, Forrester Research found in a February report. The firm predicts the market for CRM software and services will reach $10.9 billion by 2010, up from $8.4 billion this year.

3. Gartner ranks customer service software: Gartner's April Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers found a fragmented marketplace. Only Siebel made the leader's quadrant, while Microsoft and Salesforce.com were named as visionaries. There still isn't one vendor that has created a full suite for customer service needs.

4. Is SAP losing the CRM usability race?: At last year's Sapphire conference, SAP announced a revamped user interface, but it is still not widely available. Meanwhile, CRM competitors continue to focus on usability. SAP's CRM roadmap is still not clear to many users.

5. Improving the customer experience: Call centers making an emotional connection: An increasing focus on the customer experience is driving call centers to improve customer satisfaction by identifying and measuring customer emotions. Call center agent training and carefully crafted customer surveys can improve the emotional connection with customers, but the business and corresponding technology is still in its infancy.