Forrester Wave CRM Customer Service Solutions

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The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012by Kate leggett, July 11, 2012

FOR: Application Development & Delivery professionals

Key TaKeaWays

Customer service is The Cornerstone For delivering a Great Customer experienceHowever, delivering good service is diffi cult. Sixty-eight percent of US consumers report an unsatisfactory service interaction during the past 12 months. Organizations must navigate rapidly changing customer expectations and look for vendor solutions that enable the business capabilities necessary to deliver diff erentiated experiences.

The Customer service Vendor Landscape Consolidates To support Converged CapabilitiesTh e landscape of CRM suite customer service solutions is maturing and converging through mergers and acquisitions activity. Th is is a response to the demand for solutions that support cross-channel, end-to-end customer journeys, delivering high customer satisfaction scores and garnering brand loyalty among customers.

Buyers Need To probe deeply To Find The Right Customer service solutionTh e CRM suite vendors off ering customer service solutions have adopted cloud deployment models, off er improved support for business process management, have deepened their ability to manage customer data and provide richer analytics, and have added social and mobility capabilities.

© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

FOR ApplIcATIOn DEVElOpmEnT & DElIVERy pROFEssIOnAls

Why Read This RepoRT

During the past five years, the customer service capabilities of customer relationship management (CRM) suite solutions have greatly matured as vendors have focused on solidifying the foundational building blocks of customer support capabilities. Vendors have folded new technologies such as social computing, business process management, decisioning, business intelligence, and mobility into their solutions to allow organizations to offer more-personalized customer service experiences. In this report, we evaluated 18 significant products in the CRM customer services solutions space from a broad range of vendors: CDC Software, FrontRange Solutions, Maximizer Software, Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle (looking at its Oracle CRM On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel CRM products), Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies (now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix, salesforce.com, SAP (SAP CRM and SAP Business-All-in-One), SugarCRM, and Sword Ciboodle. This report details our findings on how CRM suite customer service solutions measure up and plots where they stand in relation to each other in order to help application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals select the right solution for their needs.

Table Of contents

Transform Customer service To deliver Great Customer experiences

CRM suite Customer service solutions evaluation overview

The Results: Buyers have Many Choices To sift Through

Vendor profiles

supplemental Material

notes & Resources

Forrester conducted vendor survey evaluations in February 2012 and evaluated 18 cRm solutions worthy of consideration by large organizations. We also surveyed vendor customers.

Related Research Documents

Assess cRm capabilities To pinpoint OpportunitiesJune 20, 2012

Define The Right cRm metricsApril 10, 2012

navigate The Future Of customer serviceJanuary 30, 2012

The Forrester Wave™: CRM suite Customer service solutions, Q3 2012How The Top 18 solutions stack Upby Kate leggettwith William Band, Boris Evelson, and Rowan curran

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The Forrester Wave™: cRm suite customer service solutions, Q3 2012 2

© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction prohibited July 11, 2012

TRaNsFoRM CUsToMeR seRViCe To deLiVeR GReaT CUsToMeR eXpeRieNCes

In our recent survey of 118 customer experience decision-makers, 86% said that delivering a good customer experience is one of their top strategic priorities.1 Customer service and support are the cornerstones of your organization’s ability to meet this priority.

Forrester defines customer service as:

The ability to provision service to customers — either via self-service or via an interaction with a customer service representative — before, during, and after a purchase.

Customer service is important because:

■ Good customer service experiences boost long-term loyalty. Customer loyalty has economic benefits as measured over three dimensions: willingness to consider another purchase, likelihood to switch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a friend or colleague.2 The revenue impact from a 10-percentage-point improvement in a company’s customer experience score, as measured by Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, translates into more than $1 billion.3

■ Poor customer service leads to increased costs. The cost of failing to meet customer expectations is high: 75% of consumers move to another channel when online customer service fails, and Forrester estimates that unnecessary service costs to online retailers due to channel escalation are $22 million on average.4

■ Poor service experiences risk customer defections and revenue losses. For example, if a company has 4 million customers and each spends $100 per year, the total projected revenue for a year would be $400 million. Forrester survey data shows that approximately 30% of a company’s customers (or more) have poor experiences.5 That represents 1,200,000 customers, and typically only about 2% of them complain to the contact center. That leaves 98% who don’t complain, or a total of 1,176,000 customers at risk to defect. At $100 apiece, this represents a $117,600,000 loss in revenue annually.

Good Customer service is hard To deliver

Customers know what good service is, and they demand it from every interaction that they have with a company. Forrester data shows that 68% of US consumers say that they’ve had unsatisfactory service interactions in the past 12 months. Seventy percent of online consumers expect businesses to try harder to provide superior online customer service.6

Customer service leaders must balance the need to keep their customers satisfied against the cost of their operations. Specific challenges include the need to:




■ Provide a consolidated customer service tool set for agents. Transactional data and customer history are often neither consistent nor consistently available to customer service agents across communication channels. Eighty percent of companies have nonintegrated communication channels: phone, email, chat, and web self-service.7 This leads to customers receiving inconsistent service, which increases costs and decreases customer satisfaction.

■ Follow consistent processes. Customer service agents often use multiple disconnected applications when resolving a single customer issue. This lack of a standardized discovery process negatively affects agent consistency and productivity, increases agent training times, and leads to a higher level of agent turnover due to frustration with the tool set.8

■ Comply with policy. Regulations in industries such as financial services and healthcare are becoming increasingly complex. Few real-time processes in customer service organizations audit agent actions against policy requirements, leading to higher service costs due to incurred penalties.

■ Monitor customer needs and satisfaction. It is critical for customer service managers to receive direct customer feedback, preferably as soon as the interaction with the customer has happened. It is also critical for them to understand the general impression of their service offering as expressed in the social sphere. Service managers use this information to balance the cost of service with overall customer satisfaction so that they can make realistic tradeoffs.

■ Provide cross-channel customer service in the way that customers want to receive it. In the past 12 months, 68% of customers used the phone, 60% used help or frequently asked questions (FAQs), 54% used email, 37% used chat, 20% used SMS, and 19% used Twitter.9 Customer service agents supporting these media types need access to the same information in order to ensure consistent service.

The Customer service solution Landscape has Matured and Consolidated

During the past several years, there has been continued consolidation and turmoil in the customer service solutions landscape. Vendors have acquired direct competitors or companies in adjacent spaces to broaden their customer engagement management capabilities and offerings. For example, in 2011, Oracle acquired InQuira, a leading knowledge management solution. In 2012, it acquired RightNow Technologies, a cloud CRM vendor that emphasizes customer experience and contact center technology. RightNow had gone through its own series of acquisitions prior to this, acquiring Q-Go, a natural language search vendor, and HiveLive, a social media monitoring vendor.

In late 2010, SAP acquired the mobility platform solutions provider Sybase. In 2011, the company entered into a partnership with eGain for knowledge management. In early 2012, SAP made a move into social media analysis with a partnership with NetBase, which provides social media analysis. It also acquired Syclo to accelerate its push into mobility, including efforts behind mobile asset management and field service solutions.




Since 2008, salesforce.com has made a series of acquisitions to assemble customer service assets, such as InStranet for knowledge management, Informavores for visual workflow editing, and GroupSwim, which is now part of Chatter. More-recent salesforce.com customer-service-related acquisitions since 2010 include: 1) Activa Live, a cloud-based chat vendor; 2) Radian6, a social media monitoring and engagement platform; 3) Dimdim, a collaboration vendor; 4) Model Metrics, a cloud services consulting company; 5) Assist.ly, a customer support and help desk company for the small business market; and 6) Stypi, a collaborative authoring tool.10

To make technology bets wisely, you must understand and navigate key trends in the customer service technology landscape, working to:11

■ Empower agents to deliver optimal service. Organizations are increasingly providing agents with the full history of a customer’s prior interactions over all communication channels so agents can add value to the service interaction. They are extending business process management to customer service so that agents can be led through predefined resolution paths with increased efficiency. They are adopting best practices for knowledge management, tightly tying knowledge management to case management, and adding next best action capabilities for increased cross-sell, upsell, and satisfaction results. They are also simplifying the agent workspace and making it more usable to increase productivity and efficiency.

■ Engage customers for service across channels. Customers expect cross-touchpoint service — that is, they expect to be able to start an interaction in one communication channel and complete it in another. They are realizing true return on investment (ROI) with customer communities and making them an integral component of their customer service solutions as well as putting end-to-end feedback and social listening processes in place so they can better listen to customers. Companies are also investing in their mobile customer service strategies and capabilities to ensure that they can support their customers across the breadth of mobile devices available today.

■ Understand the rapidly changing customer technologies landscape. Organizations are deploying customer service suite solutions from a single vendor instead of employing best-of-breed point solutions. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment and outsourcing options reduce costs and increase consistency across communication channels, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption continues its forward momentum, helping customer service organizations integrate disparate systems as they look for solutions that will allow them to rapidly change business processes and logic to compete in the marketplace.

CRM sUiTe CUsToMeR seRViCe soLUTioNs eVaLUaTioN oVeRVieW

To assess the state of the customer service capabilities of CRM suite solutions and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of customer service solutions from top CRM suite vendors across 255 criteria. The following assessment will help you see how the top 18 CRM suite customer service products compare.




Buyers Focus on Current offering, Future Vision, and strength of installed Base

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 255 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level categories:

■ Current offering. We looked at the strength of each vendor’s products across a wide spectrum of CRM capabilities. In addition, we evaluated each vendor’s support for customer-service-specific functionalities such as phone agent, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration, knowledge base, chat, customer forums, and the social Web. We evaluated how the products support common underlying workflows and assessed the suitability of the tools for different business models, such as business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), and business to business to consumer (B2B2C). We also evaluated each product’s support for global enterprises as well as its product architecture, usability, and cost.

■ Strategy. We looked at the strength of each vendor’s product strategy and vision and how it intends to support increasingly complex customer service requirements. Time-to-value, product strategy, and corporate strategy are also important criteria, specifically with regard to customer service needs.

■ Market presence. We gauged the size of each vendor’s customer base and evaluated the depth of human and financial resources available to enhance its products and serve customers. Market presence in this report reflects the relative importance of each CRM suite solution vendor within the overall CRM suite solutions market for large organizations.12

eighteen Vendors offer a diverse Range of Capabilities

We included 18 solutions in our assessment of CRM suite customer service solutions, including: CDC Software, FrontRange Solutions, Maximizer Software, Microsoft, NetSuite, Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies (now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix, salesforce.com, SAP (SAP Business-All-in-One and SAP CRM), SugarCRM, and Sword Ciboodle. While Oracle chose not to provide full information for four of its CRM solutions (Oracle CRM On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel CRM), we placed these solutions in the Forrester Wave™ based on our knowledge of Oracle’s solutions from past analysis and publicly available information so as to provide a complete picture of the competitive landscape.

We did not include in the assessment solutions that specialize in a narrow set of customer service functionalities. These include, for example, the interaction-centric (sometimes labeled “eService” and knowledge management) customer service vendors, some of which were reviewed in our 2008 Forrester Wave evaluation of customer service solutions: Consona CRM, eGain, Genesys Telecommunications Lab, Kana Software, LivePerson, Moxie Software, nGenera, and Numara Software.13




We also did not include point solutions that specialize in only one particular aspect of customer service operations. For instance, some of the specialty vendors not in the assessment but still important to customer service professionals include: Jive Software, Lithium, and Telligent for communities; chat software vendors; Varolii and other outbound customer communications vendors; vendors focused on a single industry vertical such as Amdocs (telecommunications); standalone knowledge management vendors such as IntelliResponse and RightAnswers; and midmarket, multichannel customer service vendors such as Parature.

Each vendor included in the evaluation (see Figure 1):

■ Offers a multifunctional CRM applications suite. Each vendor included in this Forrester Wave has functionality in a minimum of three of the following CRM subdisciplines and tools: marketing, sales force automation, customer service, field service, partner channel management, eCommerce, customer analytics, and customer data management. Products promoted primarily as best-of-breed solutions for a single functional area were not included.

■ Provides functionality that spans multiple functional areas for customer service. The vendors and products in the evaluation can support a breadth of customer service and support requirements.

■ Has a strong presence in the customer service market. Each of the evaluated vendors has hundreds, if not thousands, of customers and significant revenue from customer service licenses and users.

■ Has a product now in general release and in use by customers. The solutions we included have a specific release that was generally available at the time of data collection for this evaluation with references available for contact. For this reason, we did not evaluate Oracle Fusion CRM in this report, as the product was not yet in general release by the deadline date for inclusion.




Figure 1 Evaluated Products: Product Information And Selection Criteria

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Vendor

CDC Software

FrontRange Solutions

Maximizer Software

Microsoft

NetSuite

Oracle

Oracle

Oracle

Oracle

Pegasystems

RightNow Technologies

Sage CRM

Sage SalesLogix

salesforce.com

SAP

SAP

SugarCRM

Sword Ciboodle

Product evaluated

Pivotal CRM

GoldMine Enterprise Edition

Maximizer CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

NetSuite CRM+

Oracle CRM On Demand

Oracle E-Business Suite CRM

Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM

Oracle Siebel CRM

Pega CRM

RightNow CX

Sage CRM

Sage SalesLogix

Sales Cloud, Service Cloud

SAP CRM

CRM functionality in SAP Business-All-in-One

Sugar Enterprise

The Ciboodle Platform

Product versionevaluated

6.0.10

6.3.6

12

Q4 2011 Service Update

2012.1

R19

R12.1.2

9.1

8.2.2

6.2

RightNow CX November

v7.1

7.5.4

Winter ‘12

7.0 EhP2

7.0 EhP1

6.3

3.7

Versionrelease date

December 2011

October 2011

November 2011

October 2011

January 2012

July 2011

December 2009

October 2009

November 2011

October 2011

November 2011

March 2011

June 2011

October 2011

September 2011

May 2011

November 2011

December 2011

Vendor selection criteria

Offers a multifunctional CRM applications suite.

Provides functionality that spans multiple functional areas for customer service.

Has a strong presence in the customer service market.

Has a product now in general release and in use by customers.




The ResULTs: BUyeRs haVe MaNy ChoiCes To siFT ThRoUGh

The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 2):

■ Oracle Siebel CRM, salesforce.com, SAP BAiO, SAP CRM, and Microsoft battle for the lead. Although Oracle Seibel CRM and SAP CRM are better suited for large customer service deployments that demand high levels of customization and integration and salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM offer faster deployment times with a greater ease of use, you have to dig deep to find differences in their core customer service capabilities. In addition, RightNow (now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Pegasystems, and Oracle CRM On Demand are not far behind in breadth of capabilities compared with the leading solutions. The maturity of the customer service capabilities these vendors offer is reflected in the depth and breadth of their deployments in the marketplace. SAP Business All-in-One (BAiO) has strong customer service capabilities, as they are derived from the SAP CRM solution.

■ Pega CRM and Sword Ciboodle support process guidance for the front office. Not all enterprises have simple, interaction-centric customer service requirements. There are a set of enterprises where agents must follow complex yet reproducible processes that cut across functional silos and require agents to access data from both front- and back-office applications to answer customer requests. These enterprises are increasingly relying on customer service solutions with native business process management (BPM) capabilities that can support highly unique — and flexible — process flows in order to increase customer service process efficiencies, reproducibility, and compliance with company and regulatory policies. Sword Ciboodle has pushed into the CRM market with its focus on the intersection of business process modeling, customer service, and customer interaction management. Pegasystems offers robust BPM capabilities to support multichannel, customer-facing processes with a clear focus on customer service. CDC Software’s Pivotal CRM has gained a place in the market among companies that need highly customized user interfaces (UIs) and strong process management capabilities.

■ Oracle has expanded its portfolio of customer service solutions. Oracle benefits, and at the same time suffers from, a portfolio of strong and competing CRM customer service solutions. Although Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) CRM and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM are losing ground in the market (they are targeted primarily to their respective suite user bases), Oracle Siebel CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand remain Leaders in the overall CRM market. With its acquisition of RightNow Technologies, Oracle has now added another customer service Leader to its stable. This complexity of choice may confuse buyers looking for solutions targeted to their specific business needs. This potential confusion is increased by the recent number of acquisitions Oracle has made, including InQuira for knowledge management, ATG for eCommerce, and Endeca for search. These acquisitions raise questions about product road maps, technical integration points between products, the level of investment each solution will receive, and each addition’s coexistence strategy with the Fusion solution.




■ NetSuite, Oracle PeopleSoft CRM, Oracle EBS CRM, and SAP offer ERP integration. The integration of front-office CRM and back-office enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems provides organizations with a unified approach to managing customer interactions across multiple channels, departments, lines of business, and geographies. More importantly, it makes the preservation of data quality easier, as data is located in a single repository that all systems draw from. These advantages are NetSuite’s core tenets; it delivers a 360-degree view of customer data in a holistic ERP and CRM solution and provides users with a sound set of customer service capabilities for midsize organizations. Oracle E-Business Suite CRM attracts customers by providing ease of integration into the rest of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM attracts companies already using PeopleSoft HR and ERP solutions by providing strong integration benefits. The SAP CRM customer base has grown significantly in recent years, primarily within the large, predominantly B2B, SAP ERP installed base.

■ Sage, SugarCRM, and FrontRange Solutions offer basic customer service capabilities. Sage SalesLogix, Sage CRM, SugarCRM, and FrontRange Solutions offer a breadth, although not depth, of customer service capabilities at a lower price point than many of the market leaders that focus primarily on the needs of large enterprises. These solutions have been traditionally targeted at the midsize and small organization market, but the vendors are continuing to improve them, and these solutions are also continuing to find a home in smaller divisions of large enterprises. SugarCRM, with its commercial open source development approach, is increasingly catching the interest of larger organizations in addition to its traditional base of smaller companies and individuals.

This evaluation of the CRM suite customer service solutions market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.




Figure 2 The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012


Go online to download

the Forrester Wave tool

for more detailed product

evaluations, feature

comparisons, and

customizable rankings.

RiskyBets Contenders Leaders

StrongPerformers

StrategyWeak Strong

Currentoffering

Weak

Strong

Market presence

Full vendor participation

Incomplete vendor participation

CDC Software

FrontRange Solutions

Maximizer Software

MicrosoftPegasystems

RightNow

Sage CRMSage SalesLogix

salesforce.com

SAP BusinessAll-in-One

SAP CRM

Sword Ciboodle

SugarCRMNetSuite

Oracle CRM On Demand

Oracle E-BusinessSuite CRM

Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM

Oracle Siebel CRM




Figure 2 The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012 (Cont.)


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Max

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Fron

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CURRENT OFFERING What product is this Forrester Wave™ evaluating? Customer service Field service Business intelligence (BI) Customer data management Internationalization Industry business process support Architecture and platform Usability Cost

STRATEGY Planned enhancements Application ownership experience management methodologies Corporate strategy

MARKET PRESENCE Customer base Employees Financial performance

2.770.00

2.411.942.893.184.011.06

3.494.013.00

2.983.003.40

2.85

1.501.003.004.00

Forr

este

r’sW

eigh

ting

50%0%

45%10%

5%5%5%3%

5%12%10%

50%50%10%

40%

0%80%10%10%

3.660.00

4.141.913.432.474.672.18

4.873.943.00

3.563.004.35

4.05

2.031.503.754.50

3.660.00

4.400.333.202.804.671.49

3.914.113.80

4.194.004.50

4.35

1.951.503.004.50

2.510.00

2.250.891.382.253.351.30

3.153.784.10

3.353.002.85

3.90

1.901.503.503.50

3.150.00

2.831.883.013.714.341.45

3.744.074.15

3.373.004.30

3.60

2.302.003.004.00

2.080.00

2.230.460.751.932.030.50

2.762.813.10

1.551.002.05

2.10

1.401.002.503.50

2.720.00

2.481.412.072.533.000.67

2.914.164.20

1.831.001.85

2.85

1.251.002.002.50

3.720.00

3.242.714.324.075.003.27

4.374.914.20

4.705.005.00

4.25

3.753.505.004.50

2.710.00

2.161.862.692.523.340.51

3.414.374.15

3.413.003.45

3.90

1.931.503.753.50

3.870.00

4.092.353.073.694.012.31

4.234.913.85

4.885.003.80

5.00

3.653.504.004.50

3.740.00

3.363.494.283.764.343.75

4.614.423.85

4.925.005.00

4.80

1.751.005.004.50

3.680.00

3.424.034.283.765.003.75

4.614.422.10

4.955.004.50

5.00

4.154.005.004.50

Suga

rCRM

Swor

d C

iboo

dle

2.910.00

2.531.582.241.884.340.51

4.103.994.90

3.093.002.05

3.45

1.681.501.253.50

3.480.00

4.171.772.323.053.350.75

4.393.782.95

2.973.003.25

2.85

1.401.002.004.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

VeNdoR pRoFiLes

Leaders: a Range of solutions To Fit diverse User Needs

■ Oracle Siebel CRM offers proven breadth and depth of customer service capabilities. Oracle Siebel CRM maintains its lead with across-the-board deep CRM functionality and the ability for extreme customization. Oracle Siebel CRM is Oracle’s most fully featured




CRM solution, with deep support for many industry verticals as well as for field service. It is well suited for large, global deployments due to its open, scalable, robust architecture. With respect to customer service, Oracle Siebel CRM offers very strong support for phone agents, case management, collaboration tools, customer service analytics, business intelligence, customer data management capabilities, business process and workflow tools, and Web 2.0-enabling technologies. Additionally, it delivers strong support for knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social customer service, and email response management.

However, Oracle Siebel CRM has weak social listening capabilities and very weak support for forums. It is only available as an on-premises solution, and buyers view it as an expensive solution that requires lengthy deployment times. Oracle has a very strong road map for future enhancements, which attests to a commitment to support the product in the long term. It should be noted that Oracle RightNow, a SaaS solution, is also a key element of Oracle’s customer service solution and is currently available. Oracle Siebel CRM is a good fit for global, high-volume B2C call centers that need deep customizability and integration with other systems or that require functionality tailored for specific industries.

■ Salesforce.com beefs up its customer service offering. The salesforce.com vision is one of a “social enterprise” where customers are at the center and drive the interactions that they have with the enterprise. To support this vision, salesforce.com provides pervasive social and collaboration capabilities in Service Cloud, its customer services solution. Salesforce.com is growing quickly because of the increased adoption of the SaaS deployment model as well as continued product evolution via both organic development and acquisitions. (For example, salesforce.com has acquired Informavores for visual workflow tools, Activa Live for chat, Radian6 for social listening, Assist.ly for small and medium-size business (SMB) customer service, and Stypi for collaboration.) Salesforce.com provides very strong customer service capabilities, including phone agent support, social customer service, and social listening capabilities — all delivered via very usable interfaces. It offers strong support for agent collaboration, knowledge base, self-service to live-service transitions, email response management, forums, customer service analytics, customer data management, and workflow.

However, salesforce.com lacks industry-specific solutions and relies on its extensive partner ecosystem (AppExchange) to provide industry-specialized solutions. It also provides weak support for field service, relying on a partner solution from ServiceMax. Salesforce.com has an aggressive product road map with a clear focus on customer service. Salesforce.com best suits organizations that are looking for an easy-to-use, rapidly deployable CRM customer service application with strong social computing capabilities and that are committed to the SaaS deployment approach.




■ The CRM functionality for SAP Business All-in-One is geared for quick time-to-value. SAP Business All-in-One is a relatively new solution that allows customers to rapidly deploy preconfigured business scenarios. It is geared toward midsize companies that want to leverage comprehensive and well-integrated CRM and ERP capabilities. Common master data and built-in business analytics ensure a single source of truth and 360-degree visibility into key data. The product’s strengths include a broad subset of the deep, across-the-board CRM functionality from SAP CRM. The product has a very strong architecture and platform and an excellent end user and administrative UI. It has strong support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, email response management, customer service analytics; case management, core field service capabilities including mobile capabilities for field service, business intelligence, and customer data management.

However, it has weak support for self-service to live-service transitions, although SAP is working to address this through its partnership with eGain. SAP BAiO also has weak support for many social customer service capabilities, including forums and social listening. SAP offers the product with two deployment options: on-premises and hosted. The hosting option has two payment choices for licenses: perpetual and subscription, offering customers flexibility. A drawback to the solution is that SAP has few customer service customers that use this product to date, so the success of this solution tailored to the needs of midsize organizations remains an open question. The CRM capabilities of SAP BAiO are best suited for a midsize company that wants to leverage comprehensive and well-integrated CRM and ERP capabilities.

■ SAP CRM continues to focus on usability and delivers strong customer service capabilities. SAP’s strategic approach to CRM is to build a comprehensive portfolio with a strong focus on customer experience along operational, interaction, and decision competencies. The SAP CRM customer base has grown significantly in recent years, primarily within the large SAP ERP installed base. This is a result of SAP investing for years to improve its core CRM solution, which boasts significantly improved usability, and offering new solution packaging, pricing, and implementation options to improve its solution’s time-to-value. SAP CRM has robust, well-rounded customer service capabilities. It boasts a robust platform and architecture suitable for global deployments, has excellent field service capabilities, and offers a broad array of industry-specific solutions. Regarding core customer service capabilities, it has strong support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, email response management, customer service analytics, cross-sell and upsell during an interaction, case management, and business process support. It has strong self-service capabilities and sound capabilities for self-service to live-service transitions.

However, SAP CRM provides very weak support for social customer service, customer forums, and social listening capabilities. Prospective customers perceive it to be an expensive solution with lengthy implementation times. The vendor has addressed this issue through several




alternative solutions, including: 1) a new combined package of software and services (called SAP Rapid Deployment Solution) that provides core sales, service, and marketing capabilities in six to eight weeks for a fixed price, and 2) a solution tailored and priced more appropriately to meet the needs of midmarket organizations (the CRM functionality in SAP Business All-in-One). SAP has also introduced more pre-integrations with other solutions from within its respective corporate families to speed time-to-value. SAP CRM best suits global buyers committed to SAP and its ERP platform that need support for customer service within the context of end-to-end industry processes.

■ Microsoft offers a flexible, cost-effective customer service solution. The primary buyers of Microsoft Dynamics CRM are upper midmarket and enterprise customers that require easy-to-use, flexible customer service solutions that yield productivity gains for their customer service organizations. As a result, Microsoft’s strategy is about enabling choice to deliver these results primarily across a choice of deployment options (on-premises, cloud, partner-managed, or hybrid), payment options (license, subscription, or financing), and access points (mobile, Outlook client, browser, or SharePoint site). Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides strong customer service capabilities delivered via a robust, scalable platform and architecture suitable for global deployments and gets high marks for usability (based on the familiar Outlook UI look and feel). It offers very strong support for native business process management and provides strong support for phone agents, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, workflow, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data management.

However, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides weak support for self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, chat, core field service capabilities, spare parts management, and depot repair. It does not provide industry-specific solution sets; these are available via Microsoft’s extensive partner network. It does not provide support for social customer service or social listening, though these capabilities are on the road map for 2012. Microsoft offers a well-priced solution compared with other vendors, especially when the solution is bundled with the Microsoft Office suite, and the company also has a strong vision for future enhancements. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is best suited for B2B companies that have made a commitment to the Microsoft technology stack and that require integration with other Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and Lync.

■ Oracle CRM On Demand delivers well-rounded customer service capabilities. This product is primarily targeted to Oracle’s installed base of customers. It offers a straightforward customer service solution at an attractive cost, and its SaaS deployment mode is well suited for organizations that do not demand extensive customization. In addition, customers are attracted to its broad array of industry solutions and prebuilt integration with other Oracle solutions. Oracle CRM On Demand offers a very strong SOA-based architecture and platform. It provides strong phone agent support, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, and customer service analytics.




However, Oracle CRM On Demand provides weak support for knowledge base, self-service tools, chat, and email. It offers very weak support for self-service to live-service transitions, chat, customer forums, and social listening. It also provides very weak support for field service. Oracle CRM On Demand is attractive to midsize organizations supporting B2B customer service that want a SaaS deployment method and have a moderate or large number of agents. Oracle CRM On Demand is particularly suitable for companies that are committed to the Oracle technology stack. Buyers also appreciate its highly usable end user and administrative user interfaces.

■ Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service provides strong support for B2C enterprises. RightNow CX provides a flexible, easily configurable, and robust multichannel customer service solution with a particular strength in delivering consistent cross-channel customer experiences across the Web, social media, and contact centers. The solution offers quick time-to-value due to its SaaS deployment mode, which also allows customers to test the solution via pilots before purchasing. It also has very strong multichannel customer service, knowledge management, and social customer service capabilities. It gets high marks for usability and provides strong support for phone agent support, self-service to live-service transitions, social listening, and Web 2.0 tools. It has a strong workflow engine and provides sound support for business intelligence and customer data management.

However, RightNow CX Cloud Service has virtually no field service capabilities and does not provide industry-specific solutions. Oracle acquired RightNow Technologies in January 2012 and rebranded its solution as Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service. This solution is the CRM cornerstone of Oracle’s customer service solution. To this effect, Oracle has announced that it has increased its level of investment in this solution. RightNow CX is best suited for B2C organizations that offer robust web self-service and multichannel customer service to their customers and that emphasize the value of customer experiences.

■ Pegasystems brings BPM to the front office. Pega CRM leverages Pegasystems’ strengths in the human-centric business process management suite (BPMS) market, providing communication channel management and predictive analytics for “next-best action” in order to deliver differentiated service experiences while helping contain the cost of service. Pega CRM delivers a robust platform and architecture and strong core customer capabilities. It provides very strong support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, self-service tools, workflow, and customer service analytics. Pega also provides strong support for knowledge base, social customer service, email response management, and business intelligence. However, Pega CRM offers few field service capabilities.

Pega CRM has a strong road map for enhancements centered around making the product easier to use and deploy and leveraging predictive analytics and business intelligence to make service processes more customer centric. Pega CRM best suits enterprise buyers that want to




strengthen their ability to support rules-based customer service processes to achieve gains in customer service agent productivity, increased efficiency, and standardization of customer service and the customer experience.

strong performers: solutions That have Unique strengths or are Well-priced

■ CDC Software delivers a user-friendly, flexible, cost-effective solution. CDC’s Pivotal CRM leverages Microsoft technology to offer a solution that is highly agile and flexible, allowing B2B users to quickly respond to changing business needs. Thirty percent of its customers are in the financial services industry. Pivotal CRM offers a robust architecture and platform as well as robust internationalization and customer data management capabilities. It has strong usability, and users can leverage its native support for rich Internet application frameworks such as Ajax and Microsoft Silverlight to provide a better UI than can traditionally be accomplished through Internet applications, making the UI more similar to that of desktop applications. Overall, it provides sound customer service capabilities that include phone agent support, email response management, customer service analytics, case management, mobile customer service, and business intelligence. It also has attractive time-to-value. It is available as an on-premises or a hosted solution, with the hosted solution having a subset of the capabilities available in the on-premises product.

However, CDC Pivotal CRM provides only weak support for other customer service capabilities such as call center infrastructure, knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social listening, and customer forums. Pivotal CRM also has weak native support for field service, instead leveraging a pre-integration with the Metrix solution. Pivotal CRM has a modest road map for future development. The product suits B2B organizations that need a well-priced customer service solution that can be highly tailored to an organization’s unique best practices and that need a tailored user experience to promote user adoption.

■ Sword Ciboodle combines business process management with multichannel customer service. Sword Ciboodle continues to focus on the intersection of business process modeling with multichannel customer service. Sword Ciboodle’s target market is organizations with complex and multichannel operations that value the vendor’s personalized approach to delivering viable solutions that are alternatives to interaction-centric customer service solutions. Industries such as insurers, utilities, banks, and communications firms are high on the Ciboodle target customer list, as their customer service needs are complex yet process-centric. The product provides a powerful case and process management engine. It has strong support for core customer service capabilities including phone agent support, knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, email response management, customer service analytics, and mobile customer service. It also provides sound support for customer data management.




However, Sword Ciboodle provides weak support for social listening and business intelligence capabilities and most field service capabilities (core field service, scheduling, and spare parts management). Sword Ciboodle does not offer industry vertical solutions, although the vendor targets insurers, utilities, banks, and communications firms, all of which benefit from extending business process management to customer service. Sword Ciboodle is a good fit for buyers that are looking for a vendor to streamline and standardize complex customer-facing processes.

■ Sage SalesLogix targets the midmarket with an attractively priced solution. SalesLogix is considered Sage’s premium CRM product offering. It is targeted to B2B midmarket organizations of fewer than 1,000 users and boasts a relatively large customer base. The product has strong usability and provides users with a consistent experience whether they are connected, disconnected, or mobile, with multiple deployment options including on-premises, cloud, and hosted. Its key strengths for customer service include its usability and its platform and architecture, which can support international organizations. It offers sound phone agent support and a solid call center infrastructure. In addition, the software and ongoing fees are relatively low, making it attractive from a financial standpoint.

However, Sage SalesLogix provides relatively weak support for most customer service functionalities, such as agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, social customer service, email response management, social listening, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data management. It also has weak support for field service. It does not support forums and has no industry-specific business processes. The Sage SalesLogix product road map promises modest but continued improvements for the future. Sage SalesLogix is best suited for B2B-focused organizations that value usability, have a tight budget, and need robust sales force automation capabilities and broad customer service capabilities — but that don’t want the functional complexity of other CRM solutions.

■ SugarCRM offers the customization flexibility of an open source platform. SugarCRM’s open source model allows organizations to take a basic CRM platform application and build upon it using their own IT resources or add-on modules that are available through SugarCRM’s partner and developer communities. The application is offered as an on-premises or SaaS deployment via a private cloud, a public cloud, or partner cloud deployments. SugarCRM is emerging on the radar screen as a viable option for larger organizations. During 2011, SugarCRM made a number of announcements about its increasingly deeper alliance with IBM. SugarCRM provides a solid architecture and platform with solid scalability, reliability, availability, internationalization, security, Web 2.0-enabling technologies, and usability. It is also relatively easy to deploy. With respect to customer service functionalities, it offers sound support for phone agents, case management, agent collaboration tools, email response management, workflow, and customer service analytics.




However, SugarCRM provides weak support for most other customer service capabilities, including knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social customer service, social listening, and customer forums. It has limited field service capabilities and no depot repair or warranty management capabilities. It also has no industry-specific business process support, so buyers with strong industry vertical needs will need to build out functionality through custom development or leverage solutions via SugarCRM’s partner network. SugarCRM best suits organizations seeking a low-cost choice with deep customization flexibility in a packaged CRM application.

■ Sage CRM offers turnkey integration with Sage back-office products. Sage CRM, part of the Sage CRM product family, targets midsize and small B2B organizations. Sage priorities, embodied in the Sage CRM product, are to offer good usability, quick deployments, flexibility, and business integration at an attractive price point. The solution offers an intuitive UI and strong performance and security capabilities but lacks good scalability, which is less important for Sage CRM’s target market. It provides a solid architecture and platform with a sound call center infrastructure. In addition, the product integrates well with other Sage back-office software products such as Peachtree and Sage ERP. Sage CRM is available as an on-premises solution, as a SaaS solution at SageCRM.com, and as a hosted solution via Sage’s partner network. With respect to customer service capabilities, it provides sound support for agents, agent collaboration tools, email response management, mobile customer service, case management, and customer service analytics.

However, Sage CRM has overall weak support for a broad set of customer service capabilities including phone agents, social customer service, forums, business intelligence, and customer data management. It has very weak support for knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, and field service capabilities. It has no support for social listening and does not support industry-specific business processes. Sage CRM remains a good fit for midmarket organizations that already use other Sage back-office products and have limited technology budgets yet require a solution that offers multiple deployment options and lightweight customer service functionality.

■ NetSuite’s end-to-end front- and back-office solution ensures high data quality. NetSuite’s SaaS-only solution targets midsize organization and emphasizes front- and back-office integration to deliver a 360-degree view of customer data. The product’s functionality spans enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting, and eCommerce as well as CRM. Although NetSuite’s offering generally provides weak support for customer service capabilities, it has good usability, a robust platform and architecture, internationalization capabilities, and strong support for phone agents. It has sound support for case management, email response management, business intelligence, and customer data management as well as a solid workflow engine and sound reporting and customer service analytics.




However, NetSuite’s offering has weak support for call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, field service, and mobile customer service. It has very weak support for industry-specific business processes but specifically targets several vertical markets, including wholesale/distribution, software, professional services, eCommerce, IT VARs, media and publishing, and, more recently, manufacturers. It does not offer support for social customer service or social listening. NetSuite’s offering best suits organizations that require a single-application SaaS solution to easily manage data quality and to deliver front- and back-office functions of CRM, ERP, eCommerce, and financials.

■ Oracle E-Business Suite CRM’s strengths are field service and ERP integration. Oracle EBS CRM incorporates a set of applications that includes information-driven sales, service, and marketing. It provides easy integration with the rest of the Oracle E-Business Suite and targets customers that desire the simplicity and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of a suite of front- and back-office applications that improves data quality and allows all business units to draw from the same source of data. From a customer service perspective, the Oracle EBS CRM solution offers an open, standards-based architecture suitable for global deployments. Its very strong field service capabilities are also noteworthy. It has strong customer service capabilities that include case management, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, email response management, workflow, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data management. It has sound support for phone agents, self-service to live-service transitions, forums, and mobile customer service. The solution offers on-premises or offsite hosted deployment options, but it does not offer a SaaS deployment alternative. The solution also provides sound support for some industry-specific CRM business processes, for example, in the manufacturing, high-tech, and retail sectors.

However, the solution lacks capabilities in social customer service and social listening. Its cost, lengthy implementation cycles, and lack of a solid product road map, outside of incremental improvements to current functionality, are also drawbacks. The Oracle EBS CRM customer service solution best suits buyers that are committed to using Oracle for their platform and applications in order to achieve TCO economies, that require deep functionality to support field service operations, and that need comprehensive multinational capabilities.

Contenders: solutions That provide Basic Customer service Capabilities

■ Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM targets selected industries. The Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM product line has a significant base of loyal customers that value the integration benefits and usability of PeopleSoft’s HR and ERP suite. To this end, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM supports SOA for ease of integration. It is available as an on-premises or a hosted solution, and it offers excellent scalability, reliability, and security as well as very strong support for call center infrastructure — all necessary capabilities for supporting its large-scale deployments. It




offers strong and well-rounded support for customer service, including agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self- service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, email response management, forums, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data management. Its workflow and field service capabilities are sound.

However, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM does not offer social customer service or social listening. It provides its mobile customer service capabilities through third-party mobile vendor integration. Its only industry-specific solutions are for the public sector, particularly higher education — a focus of investment through the Campus Solutions portfolio. It is also has a focus on HR service delivery into the existing PeopleSoft HCM installed base. As such, Oracle PeopleSoft CRM has developed solutions to apply CRM-type capabilities to support the needs of HR departments. It helps customers optimize HR service delivery with the HelpDesk for Human Resources and Workforce Communications products. Customers see it as relatively expensive solution with somewhat lengthy deployment cycles. In addition, Oracle’s road map for this solution is narrow, primarily limited to targeting several selected industries and use cases. Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM customer service solutions are suitable for existing PeopleSoft customers that need a broad-based CRM platform to build upon, need strengths in customer service functionality, and value the suite-play and single-vendor approach for TCO gains.

■ Maximizer Software offers basic customer service capabilities. Maximizer CRM offers a breadth (although not depth) of customer service capabilities at an attractive price point and a quick deployment time that can range from a few days to a few weeks. This solution is targeted toward the midsize to small organization. With respect to customer service capabilities, the product has strong usability, email response management, and customer service analytics. It provides sound support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, case management, and mobile customer service.

However, Maximizer CRM provides weak support for other customer service capabilities such as knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social customer service, social listening, business intelligence, and customer data management. It also has very weak support for agent collaboration tools, field service, and industry-specific business processes. Maximizer CRM is appropriate for smaller firms and divisions of large organizations seeking an on-premises or partner-hosted CRM suite application that includes basic customer service functionality with a low price tag.

■ FrontRange Solutions offers core customer service capabilities for smaller organizations. FrontRange has effectively targeted small and midmarket organizations with its GoldMine solution, which is evident through the product’s sizable customer base. However, the GoldMine Enterprise Edition (GMEE) product, the most fully featured GoldMine product, has a much smaller customer base. The GMEE solution is available as either an on-premises or hosted solution. The high points of the on-premises GMEE solution include solid case management capabilities as well as a modern platform and architecture with high marks for




reliability, availability, and security — at an attractive price point. It provides sound support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, workflow engine, customer service analytics, and usability.

However, the GMEE solution has weak support for knowledge base, self-service tools, and email response management. It provides very weak support for self-service to live-service transitions, forums, and business intelligence. It has very weak core field service capabilities and offers no support for depot repair or warranty management. It does not support industry-specific business processes. Social customer service and social listening capabilities, currently lacking, are on the road map, as is a true SaaS deployment option. FrontRange GMEE best suits small and midmarket organizations that seek a proven CRM solution at a low cost with breadth but not depth of customer service functionality.

sUppLeMeNTaL MaTeRiaL

online Resource

The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings. Because Oracle chose not to provide full information for four of its CRM solutions (Oracle CRM On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel CRM), we have not included a detailed spreadsheet summarizing its products in the Forrester Wave tool associated with this document.

data sources Used in This Forrester Wave

Forrester used a combination of several data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution:

■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls and briefings where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.

■ Customer reference survey. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted a survey of some vendors’ current customers.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.




After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.

We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.

eNdNoTes1 Forrester surveyed 118 customer experience decision-makers from large North American firms to gauge

the importance of focusing on a customer experience strategy and the types of customer experience projects undertaken. See the February 17, 2011, “The State Of Customer Experience, 2011” report.

2 Forrester data confirms the strong relationship between the quality of a firm’s customer experience (as measured by Forrester’s Customer Experience Index [CxPi]) and loyalty measures such as willingness to consider the company for another purchase, likelihood to switch business, and likelihood to recommend. See the July 7, 2011, “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2011” report.

3 To help customer experience professionals prove the business value of a better enterprise customer experience, we built simple models that show how revenue increases when a company’s Customer Experience Index (CxPi) score goes up. Our models show that the benefits are significant across all 11 industries we looked at. Wireless carriers and hotels have the largest potential upside: more than $1 billion. Customer experience professionals should use the interactive models in this report to estimate the range of benefits their firm might see. That data — combined with customers’ verbatim comments and customer experience stories — will help customer experience leaders make a powerful case for change. See the July 7, 2011, “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2011” report.

4 When consumers switch from the Web to the phone, email, or chat, a company’s cost to serve them goes up dramatically. Forrester built models to add up the unnecessary cost that a retailer might incur as a result of missed self-service opportunities. Calculations showed an extra $22,567,967 in sales and service costs that could have been avoided if the website had enabled users to complete their goals. See the January 13, 2011,

“2011 Will Challenge The Status Quo Of eBusiness Online Customer Service” report.

5 For the fifth consecutive year, Forrester asked more than 7,600 consumers to rate the experiences they had with 160 brands across 13 industries. One-third of the brands we asked about earned scores in the “poor” or








“very poor” categories. See the January 23, 2012, “The Customer Experience Index, 2012” report.

6 According to Forrester’s North American Technographics® Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009 (US), 68% of US consumers say that they’ve had unsatisfactory service interactions in the past 12 months. Sixteen percent of these consumers vented through social channels, such as online customer reviews, Facebook status updates, or blog posts. See the January 13, 2011, “2011 Will Challenge The Status Quo Of eBusiness Online Customer Service” report.

7 Forrester surveyed 304 contact center decision-makers in North America and European enterprises about trends in their contact centers and found that multichannel integration is anticipated in 21% of contact centers. See the October 27, 2011, “Contact Center Purchase Plans 2011” report.

8 Today, user-centered design isn’t widely used to improve call center interactions. That needs to change. When applied in the call center, the core activities of a user-centered design process — research, ideation, prototyping, and testing — can help customer experience professionals identify and fix problems that frustrate agents and lead to poor customer experiences. See the April 6, 2011, “Why Your Call Center Needs User-Centered Design” report.

9 This data was derived from the North American Technographics® Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2011 (US), which asked 7,638 US customers what communication channels they had used to receive customer service in the past 12 months.

10 Source: Marshall Lager, “The 2011 Year in Review — A CRM Recap,” CRMsearch.com (http://www.crmsearch.com/2011review.php).

11 Forrester documents 15 leading trends that customer service decision-makers need to embrace in order to stay competitive. These trends focus on streamlining the customer service agent experience, focusing on customer-centric improvements such as proactive outbound and voice-of-the-customer initiatives, and adopting modern technologies and deployment methodologies. See the January 30, 2012, “Navigate The Future Of Customer Service” report.

12 Note: The size of the bubbles is based on a compilation of the product’s number of CRM customers, number of CRM seats, and financial strength. It is not based on its number of customer service customers or customer service seats.

13 In 2008, Forrester evaluated leading customer service solution vendors across approximately 180 criteria and found that the vendors still need to be grouped into three groups: interaction-, process-, and record-centric. Forrester found the Leaders in the customer-interaction-centric products to be eGain Communications, KANA Software, RightNow Technologies, Talisma, LivePerson, and KNOVA; the Leader in business-process-centric products was Sword Ciboodle; and the Leaders in the customer-record-centric products were Microsoft, salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel, SAP, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Entellium. Among interaction-centric products, Genesys Telecommunications Labs, InQuira, and Numara Software were Strong Performers. Pegasystems, Chordiant Software, and Consona CRM were Strong Performers within the process-centric category. Within the record-centric category, NetSuite, Oracle PeopleSoft CRM, Maximizer Software, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Sage CRM, SugarCRM, Infor, and Sage SalesLogix were all Strong Performers. See the October 21, 2008, “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Software Solutions, Q4 2008” report.











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