Gartner Says Customer Relationship Management Software Market Grew 12.5 Per Cent in 2012

Salesforce.com passed SAP as the lead vendor in the worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) software market in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Total worldwide CRM software revenue totalled $18 billion in 2012, up 12.5 per cent from $16 billion in 2011.

"Competition among CRM software vendors really heated up in 2012, as major players continued to vie for broader market penetration internationally and more widespread adoption within midsize to large enterprises," said Joanne Correia, vice president at Gartner. "Market growth in 2012 was three times the average for all enterprise software, highlighting how CRM is at the eye of the Nexus of Forces storm."

Vendors benefited from strong demand for software as a service (SaaS), which represented nearly 40 per cent of CRM total software revenue in 2012, as organisations of all sizes sought easier-to-deploy alternatives to replace legacy systems, as net-new applications or to provide alternative complementary functionality.

The top five CRM vendors accounted for nearly 50 per cent of CRM software revenue in 2012. Salesforce.com replaced SAP as the largest vendor in the CRM market as its direct sales pushed its CRM revenue to more than $2.5 billion (see Table 1). Second-place SAP's growth was less than one per cent in USD terms, largely because currency headwinds were stronger in 2012 and the euro was weak. While SAP was not the worldwide leader in CRM for 2012, it was still the largest vendor in terms of revenue in Western and Eastern Europe.

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