Gartner Says CRM and Security Software Markets Will Grow

Gartner Says CRM and Security Software Markets Will Grow

Whenever there is an economic slowdown, not every sector of the IT space sees decreased spending. Some areas seem to be immune to calls from the boardroom to cut spending because these technologies help the company retain customers, provide better or cheaper products or services, or even boost sales. And so it seems to be with both customer relationship management (CRM) and security software sales, according to the analysts at Gartner.

CRM is, of course, a decade-old extension of ERP systems that aims to keep better track of customers and allow companies to up-sell and cross-sell products and services to their customers--to wring more money and therefore profits out of their existing customers because it is ten times more expensive to get a new customer than to keep one (or so the saying goes). Gartner says that CRM software spending globally hit $7.8 billion in 2007 and are projected to rise by 14.2 percent to $8.9 billion this year. Gartner's economic models already have cooler IT spending growth built in, and the company is currently forecasting 3.3 percent overall IT spending growth worldwide in 2008. (See \r\nMost CIOs Say 2008 IT Budgets Are Stable, So Far for more on that general trend.) And based on current projections, Gartner is projecting that CRM software sales will continue to be robust through 2012, when Gartner says that it will hit $13.3 billion.

The North American market is the biggest part of the CRM market, accounting for $4.3 billion in CRM sales in 2007, or 55.1 percent of the global market, and spending is accelerating somewhat. In 2012, Gartner reckons that North American companies will spend $7.8 billion, or 58.6 percent of the total spending, on CRM wares. Sales in Europe, by contrast, were $2.6 billion in 2007 and will only grow to $3.9 billion in 2012. As a percentage of the total CRM market, Europe is declining (although in absolute terms, CRM spending will rise by 50 percent in the five years between 2007 and 2012). For all the talk about the explosion in IT sales in China and India, a lot of the companies in these areas do not interface with users, but are manufacturers that make products for other wholesalers and retailers--and as such, CRM is not as critical (or at least seems not to be based on spending). Gartner is projecting that CRM spending in the Asia/Pacific region was $410 million in 2007, and will more than double to $840 million by 2012. Gartner said that software as a service (SaaS) would play an increasingly key role in the CRM space, but did not elaborate on how much money SaaS implementations of CRM software would generate. (You have to pay for that data.)

While CRM software is not necessarily critical for all companies in modern economies, the ubiquitousness of Internet technologies in systems and networks and the Windows platform on the desktop means security software is important for everyone. And that is why spending on security software is high and going higher. According to Gartner, security software of all types accounted for $9.4 billion in spending globally in 2007, and is projected to rise by 11.2 percent to $10.5 billion in 2008. Looking out to the five-year span that ends in 2012, Gartner says that it anticipates security software spending to hit $13.1 billion.

"Security spending is driven by a variety of pressing concerns, the most immediate of which is the need to 'keep the bad guys out' through defensive measures, such as next-generation firewalls," says Ruggero Contu, the principal research analyst at Gartner who tracks security software. "However, the 'let the good guys in' discipline, such as identity and access management, is where business benefits and return on investment can be more clearly shown."

What are your thoughts?

What salesperson could live without his mobile phone?

The Rebirth of a Salesperson

Salespeople need sales intelligence tools designed to both support the sales function and enable them to sell more on every call.

Technology is an inescapable part of today's sales process--what salesperson could live without his mobile phone, for instance? No amount of technology is going to turn a poor salesperson into a great one, but there are ways of using IT to turn an ordinary salesperson into a star player. What salesperson need are sales intelligence tools designed to support the sales function and enable them to sell more on every call.

Consider the following scenario: You run a successful distribution company. You have some 25,000 products and a customer base numbering around 5,000. You have six sales representatives. The success of your company depends on the performance of these half-dozen individuals, but how do you know that they are reaching their full potential?
To succeed, your salesmen must not only have an in-depth knowledge of the product portfolio, they must also be fully aware of the opportunities and threats within their existing and potential customer base. The jargon for this is product and situational fluency. It's a lot to grasp for one individual--perhaps too much. The very best sales performers succeed because they can achieve this dual fluency, but for the majority it's a struggle, and there are inevitably compromises.
One option is to become a product specialist, adept at identifying cross-selling opportunities but with a tendency to focus on a narrow selection of favourite customers and miss the bigger picture. At the other end of the scale are those who devote themselves to knowing the market inside out. They can tell you exactly who's buying what from whom but, through lack of product expertise, miss subtle sales opportunities when they're actually in front of the customer.

There is no shame in going down either of these routes. For most it is simply the inevitable consequence of having to deal with a huge volume of data. But as managing data is what computers are so good at, it makes sense to look for a way to use IT to improve the working life of the salesperson by removing this need to compromise.
Successful sales depend on identifying the right opportunities and delivering the right package. All the information needed to find these opportunities and make the right deals is somewhere within your company's databases. Sales intelligence software is designed to automate the extraction of this knowledge and deliver it to the sales troops. It generates leads by automatically identifying new sales opportunities within an existing customer base, therefore improving sales effectiveness.
Sales intelligence software monitors and analyses the buying patterns of customers by drawing data from existing accounts and enterprise software. Irregularities, and other trends in customer spending, trigger alerts that translate into sales leads delivered straight to the sales force. The result is increased share of customer spend, higher profitability per order, and improved customer retention.
Sales intelligence is not rocket science and it does not involve re-engineering your business. It's simply a question of promoting situational fluency and encouraging reluctant salesperson to look beyond their comfortable, familiar set of customers.

So I ask you now; "What sales person could live without Sales Intelligence?"

Vecta-SaaS

About us

Sales Intelligence Software

Vecta is designed for Manufacturers, Wholesalers and Distributors.

VECTA proactively delivers real insight into your customers' buying patterns and your sales team will immediately see the benefits. Increasing the value of every sale, and therefore their own results, it's a tool they will actively seek to use. By providing total visibility of the sales issues and opportunities, it arms your entire sales team with the tools it needs to improve its effectiveness, and beat its targets.

As well as being invaluable to the sales team, VECTA is an integrated solution for the entire sales and marketing function of your operation. It provides both management and executives with access to the information they need to be more successful. And unlike CRM and traditional BI tools, implementing and supporting. VECTA is simple and will not burden your IT resources. VECTA is easy to use, and your entire company will be up and running within days.

Some of our customers include: Screwfix Direct, Antalis and FPS.