The global CRM market is expected to total almost $18 billion by 2006, according to a new report by the Aberdeen Group.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a concept used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to improve relationships with them. Aberdeen believes that various innovations are set to bring about a sea change in the way companies acquire and pay for these solutions.
The market analysis company forecasts that worldwide CRM spending will increase from $13.7 billion last year to $17.7 billion in 2006. This equates to compound annual growth of 6.7%.
However, new CRM applications from independent software vendors and systems integrators will boost the profile of subscription-oriented models and revenues from these sources are expected to jump from $246 million to $2.8 billion over the next three years. As a consequence of this, perpetual licence models are proving less popular and sales will drop from $3 billion to $2.5 billion over the same period.
CRM spending by small and medium-sized businesses is expected to exceed that of larger enterprises, partly because of newly available pricing and software architecture models.
The US currently accounts for 52% of the total CRM market and revenues are set to increase from $7.14 billion to $9.19 billion in 2006. However, its share will drop slightly as a result of increasing global adoption, notably in the Asia-Pacific region.
