We prepared a detailed review of the most interesting facts about the CRM market to help companies make the right decision about CRM implementation. Let’s take a deeper look at the latest tendencies on the CRM market, CRM features, pros, and cons.
CRM market is growing fast
CRM market revenue has exceeded the revenue of database management systems (DBMS) and continues to grow. SelecHub reports that the CRM market scope will be about $80 billion in 2025.
Ovum forecasts that in 2022 key business departments will increase their capacities with CRM software to enhance their workflows:
- Marketing automation – by 15.86%;
- Customer service – by 14.37%;
- Sales automation – by 10.83%.
High demand for CRM will lead to high competition. CMS vendors will enhance their products, making them more convenient and multifunctional.
Salesforce stays on top of the CRM market
As the latest Gartner research says, the Salesforce share on the market is 19.5%, which makes it the unquestioned leader. Being a strong platform, Salesforce still needs customization to suit the specific requirements of a company. This is the time for Salesforce experts to jump in.
Salesforce provides a great number of features that meet the requirements of different businesses. Yet, Salesforce, as a CRM solution, has several competitors:
Let’s consider their market shares:
- SAP – 8.3%
- Oracle – 5.5%
- Adobe – 5.1%
- Microsoft – 2.7%
- Others – 58.8%
CRM allows companies to be more competitive
As we know from the CRM Cloud Survey Report, made by Soft Clouds, more than 80% of companies use CRM for automating their sales processes and sales reporting.
CRM implementation helps companies to increase employees’ efficiency, customer engagement, and retention. So, this way, a company with CRM gets more benefits than its competitor without such a tool.
Correct CRM implementation leads to high payback
FinancesOnline calculated that proper CRM implementation could pay off from $2.50 to $5.60 per every dollar of its price. Nucleus Research in its Enterprise Technology Buyer’s Guide gives the example of Quint Wellington Redwood Group (training and IT consulting) that had the CRM profitability at about 1,556% during the first three years after CRM implementation.
These brilliant results were achieved due to several moments:
- high efficiency of employees work without additional staff;
- growth of sales-qualified leads by 300%;
- increase in the number of closed deals by 100%.
Cloud is preferable to on-premises
SelectHub conducted the research and interviewed CRM owners about what kind of CRM they use. Based on these results, 56% of respondents prefer cloud-based CRM, 43% consider cloud-based and on-premises CRMs, and 1% are not determined yet. As we see, despite the majority choosing the cloud-based solution, a lot of respondents don’t reject the on-premises implementation. As a rule, they are representatives of mid-sized and large companies that have dedicated specialists and IT-resources for supporting such a kind of CRM.
CRM is mostly used in services, IT, and manufacturing
SelectHub also explored what kinds of businesses frequently use CRM. Research data shows that 32% of CRM users belong to the service industry, both IT and Manufacturing have 13% each, then go Finance with 10%. In 2015, retailing companies were on top of this list (18%), but now they represent only 3% (Capterra).
Sales performance depends on the level of CRM adoption
The level of CRM adoption has an impact on the workflows of sales departments and their productivity. Miller Heiman Group demonstrated in its report that a low level of CRM adoption (≤75%) leads to a low ROI of sales teams. They have a small win rate of sales opportunities and a lower level of quota realization than companies with a high level of CRM adoption. So, according to this data, if you want to enhance your sales department productivity, you should provide training in CRM features to your employees and give them tutorials.
Mobile CRM applications can give you a lot of advantages
FinancessOnline research shows that companies with mobile CRM applications get a lot of advantages:
- increase in the level of customer satisfaction by 74%;
- increase in sales by 87%;
- increase in the efficiency of business processes by 73%.
This way, mobile CRM investments lead to remarkable results.
Several circumstances can impede CRM usage
HubSpot in their State of Inbound report enumerated the main problems which prevent successful CRM usage. They are:
- Manual data entry – 23%;
- Lack of integration with other tools – 17%;
- Difficult to track sales funnel – 9%;
- Invalid or incorrect data – 9%;
- Managers don’t use it – 7%;
- It’s too complicated – 7%;
- Sales team don’t use it – 6%;
- Other – 4%;
- Don’t know/not applicable – 18%.
According to this data, if you want to get the required results from your CRM implementation, you should plan future integrations and additional features to improve your CRM solution.
Lack of CRM features is the main reason for CRM investments
SelectHub research devoted to CRM shows that there are several reasons why companies make additional investments in the CRM solution.
- Functionality: Lack of CRM features – 22.75%;
- Not centralized: Multiple systems or sources of information – 17.25%;
- Cumbersome: Hard to use, inflexible, slow – 12.55%;
- Integration: Doesn’t integrate well with other software – 10.2%;
- Legacy: Old, outdated, heavily customized – 9.8%;
- Costly: Expensive for licenses or maintenance – 9.41%;
- Inefficient: Doesn’t help them get organized – 9.02%;
- New CRM: New company – 7.45%;
- Analytics: Inefficient reporting – 7.06%;
- Outgrown: Need for modern CRM – 7.06%
So, before CRM implementation, you should also think about what CRM features you need, and if the chosen platform can provide them with or without customization.
CRM is an efficient tool that can bring your company a lot of profit and pay back soon if you implement it properly. So, choose your CRM solution and turn to experienced specialists that can customize it and improve with needed features.