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Nucleus Research Launches CRM Technology Value Matrix

By Arvind Arora
TMCnet Contributor

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a vital tool for enterprises of all sizes that helps them in comprehensive analysis and planning of overall strategy towards their customers.

Nucleus Research, a research firm that offers investigative, case-based technology research and advisory services to optimize the technology value for enterprises, has announced the results of a CRM Technology Value Matrix study it conducted recently. According to the study, CRM applications are being constantly upgraded with advanced features that enhance their overall functionality, such as sales effectiveness, social capabilities, marketing and web optimization with trends towards mobile application support. A number of vendors have been analyzed in this Value Matrix by Nucleus Research, some of which are Microsoft, Oracle (News - Alert) and Salesforce.com.

“CRM decision makers today are looking beyond simply tracking and measuring sales force or customer service activity at a lower cost. They want access to tools that will make individual performers more productive, keeping mobile access and collaborative capabilities high on their checklist,” commented Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research. “Vendors adding this functionality are taking a leader position in the industry, as seen on the Technology Matrix,” Wettemann noted.

Some of the new CRM offerings are equipped with a number of social CRM capabilities such as microblogging, conversations and automated activity update integration. Additionally, the vendors providing these solutions have been planning to add various new features such as customer self-service and enhanced web support capabilities with mobile innovation in recent future.

A number of CRM solutions have adopted Software as a Service or ‘SaaS’ (News - Alert) and Cloud based model. Similarly, HTML5 is being used to push universal access to mobile applications. Enterprises of all sizes that want to analyze the core CRM areas including sales, marketing and service will find the CRM Value Matrix introduced by Nucleus Research a helpful tool in assessing the functionality and usability of software investments. It will also enable them to plan their future development and launching to a much accurate and precise level.

In October 2011, Nucleus Research announced the results of a recent study which stated that half of U.S. companies plan to invest more on IT resources in 2012 than in 2011 while only one out of 10 companies plan to decrease IT spending next year. Among these, 10 percent of the companies said they are planning an increase of 10 percent or greater.