Call Center Software Featured Article

U.S. SMB Cloud CRM Market Set to Triple by 2015: AMI-Partners

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

The software-as-a-service customer relationship management (SaaS (News - Alert) CRM) market in the U.S. will record double-digit year-over-year growth in the next five years, according to AMI-Partners.

The U.S. SMB cloud services study by AMI-Partners has predicted that spending on SaaS CRM will outpace on-premise CRM by a margin of nearly four to one during this period.

The growth is happening as cloud-based business applications are generating substantial attention from U.S. small and medium businesses (SMBs). 570,000 U.S. SMB firms are already utilizing SaaS CRM.

"Customer engagement on social networking sites is driving SMBs to pay closer attention to their social communities. But it is the influence of the cloud that affects their decision to adopt more advanced customer solutions," said Jacqueline Atkinson, research manager at AMI-Partners, in a statement.

"Such market trends are creating the right conditions for the integration of social media with CRM applications for enhanced interactions with customers. In fact, U.S. SMB CRM users are a third more likely to engage in social media activities for business than firms who do not use CRM," Atkinson added.

AMI's research said that a majority of U.S. SMB decision makers are showing consideration to how they approach the marketplace and engage both existing and potential customers.

SaaS CRM vendors’ social component, such as Salesforce.com (News - Alert) with its Radian6 platform or Sage's SalesLogix Cloud CRM application, will be adding value in moving SMBs toward leveraging social CRM. These vendors are expected to improve their position in this growing SaaS CRM market.

Recently, Research and Markets released a CRM market report saying the Chinese customer relationship management market is driven by the need for better service. The CRM market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21.5 percent. The report, which focuses exclusively on China, indicates that the market is currently driven by the need for better customer service in the region.