Third annual CRM survey

December 1, 2006 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Welcome to our third annual roundup of customer relationship management systems. This year, we have 16 systems, including ACT!, Epicor, Epiphany, Exact e-Synergy, GoldMine, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite, SageCRM.com, SalesLogix, Salesforce and SAP Business One. We are fortunate that many of the leading CRM vendors are participating in our survey this year. We also interviewed Microsoft, Sage and Salesforce.com for their views on trends and what they think makes them different.

The big CRM trends this year are hosting, integration and open source. Salesforce.com and NetSuite paved the way for application service providers to become a respected method for deploying this type of software. ASPs host applications on their Internet sites, which are typically equipped with state-of-the-art technology and security. This allows organizations to avoid the costs associated with managing the computer and database that goes with it. In 2006, both Microsoft and SAP jumped on the ASP bandwagon...”