News
IDC Predicts Big Growth in CRM Market
- By Scott Bekker
- July 26, 2000
Massachusetts-based research firm IDC recently released a report in which it predicted enormous growth in the customer relationship management (CRM) market during the next four years.
IDC (www.idc.com) looked at the development of CRM solutions within the context of a closed-loop CRM system. It is the data warehousing aspect of the closed-loop CRM system that the research firm expects will see phenomenal growth.
As part of its research IDC outlined the critical steps to establishing a closed-loop CRM system. These include the incorporation of customer interaction, customer data integration, customer data analysis, and customer interaction personalization.
At the end of 1999 sales in the CRM market -- including software and services -- came in just under $4.2 billion. By 2004, IDC predicts that gross CRM revenue will surpass $20 billion. And while more than half of the current revenue total is generated by software sales, it is expected that services will make up about 55 percent of all revenue by 2004.
IDC says that companies providing CRM services, as well as software solutions will be in the best position to help develop the evolving CRM-centric data warehousing model. - Alicia Costanza
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.