2013 Readers' Choice: Customer Relationship Management

CGT’s readers rank the top 10 companies that provide an enterprise software suite specific to customer relationship management (CRM), including marketing, sales force automation, category management, etc.

Download the full Customer Relationship Management Report

One-size-fits-all CRM functionality will not suffice for today’s consumer goods manufacturers. Organizations must differentiate how they serve and promote products across markets, routes, channels and types of accounts. Deloitte Consulting LLP Principle Alan Langhals describes the changing CRM market.


Can you comment on the survey results in this category?
Langhals: The listing clearly comprises the market leaders in consumer goods CRM with the long-term players (SAP, Oracle and Accenture CAS) being aggressively pushed by up and coming offerings from TradeInsight and Retail Optimization. Flexible, software-as-a-service delivery is in high demand, offering speed of deployment, ease of use and the appeal of cloud computing. The balance is depth of solution sophistication for speed and cost. Although Oracle dropped a few places to No. 4, it continues to have a function rich set of solutions for the most sophisticated consumer goods TPM needs.

Which CRM trends will soon take shape for the consumer goods companies?
Langhals: Consumer goods companies are taking an “analytics back” approach to solutions, defining the insights that sales and marketing teams need at their fingertips and then selecting, developing and deploying software that can capture and synthesize data sources to deliver the insights to enable rapid decision making.

Disruptive innovations driven by social media sources, like ShopKick, GigWalk, Quri, Food Genius, are creating a wave of Big Data that consumer goods companies need to harvest and exploit for insights and growth. Analytics and reporting are no longer after-thoughts when deploying new solutions; rather, they are a critical consideration.

Additionally, the user experience of CRM applications must be a top priority for consumer goods companies. The goal is now to deliver front-end experiences that rival the most intuitive web sites and tablets while building them on top of robust CRM capabilities.

You mention social media’s impact on CRM. Can you elaborate on how the two are intertwined?
Langhals: Social media and related disruptive mobile innovations are impacting CRM through Big Data and analytics. CRM will need to be a seamless, two-way interaction between commercial operations and the core of the consumer goods organization. Speed, reactiveness, and consumer intimacy driven by social and mobile will reshape the marketing and sales organizations. consumer goods companies that create high levels of brand engagement and buzz, like alcoholic beverages, energy drinks and fashion, have the potential to fully exploit the benefits.

BREAKOUT FAVORITES
Customer Experience Leader: Accenture CAS
“Accenture CAS is the software solution for our Account Planning and Promotional Excellence program called APEX. Accenture CAS has partnered with us and has worked very closely with our team as we progress this important initiative.”
— Hal Dally, VP of IT, L’Oreal USA

SMB Market Leader: Microsoft Corp.
“The Microsoft vision and strategy for Microsoft Dynamics CRM meant a lot to us. We saw the power of the tool in giving us what we were looking for in terms of integrating systems, connecting information, and bridging between teams.”
­— David Bussey, Business Systems Analyst, STIHL, Inc.