Wave - CRM Suite Customer Service Q3 2012

FOR: Application
Development
& Delivery
professionals
The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite

Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012
by Kate leggett, July 11, 2012
Key TaKeaWays
Customer service is The Cornerstone For delivering a Great
Customer experience
However, delivering good service is difficult. Sixty-eight percent of US consumers
report an unsatisfactory service interaction during the past 12 months.
Organizations must navigate rapidly changing customer expectations and look
for vendor solutions that enable the business capabilities necessary to deliver
differentiated experiences.
The Customer service Vendor Landscape Consolidates To support
Converged Capabilities
The landscape of CRM suite customer service solutions is maturing and converging
through mergers and acquisitions activity. This is a response to the demand for
solutions that support cross-channel, end-to-end customer journeys, delivering
high customer satisfaction scores and garnering brand loyalty among customers.
Buyers Need To probe deeply To Find The Right Customer service
solution
The CRM suite vendors offering customer service solutions have adopted cloud
deployment models, offer improved support for business process management,
have deepened their ability to manage customer data and provide richer analytics,
and have added social and mobility capabilities.
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn park Drive, cambridge, mA 02140 UsA

Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
July 11, 2012
The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer

Service Solutions, Q3 2012
How The Top 18 Solutions Stack Up
by Kate Leggett
with William Band, Boris Evelson, and Rowan Curran
Why Read This Report

During the past five years, the customer service capabilities of customer relationship management (CRM)
suite solutions have greatly matured as vendors have focused on solidifying the foundational building
blocks of customer support capabilities. Vendors have folded new technologies such as social computing,
business process management, decisioning, business intelligence, and mobility into their solutions to allow
organizations to offer more-personalized customer service experiences. In this report, we evaluated 18
significant products in the CRM customer services solutions space from a broad range of vendors: CDC
Software, FrontRange Solutions, Maximizer Software, Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle (looking at its Oracle
CRM On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel
CRM products), Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies (now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Sage
CRM, Sage SalesLogix, salesforce.com, SAP (SAP CRM and SAP Business-All-in-One), SugarCRM, and
Sword Ciboodle. This report details our findings on how CRM suite customer service solutions measure
up and plots where they stand in relation to each other in order to help application development and
delivery (AD&D) professionals select the right solution for their needs.
Table Of Contents
Notes & Resources
2 Transform Customer Service To Deliver Great

Customer Experiences
Forrester conducted vendor survey

evaluations in February 2012 and evaluated
18 CRM solutions worthy of consideration by
large organizations. We also surveyed vendor
customers.
4 CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions

Evaluation Overview
8 The Results: Buyers Have Many Choices To
Sift Through
11 Vendor Profiles
21 Supplemental Material
Related Research Documents

Assess CRM Capabilities To Pinpoint
Opportunities
June 20, 2012
Define The Right CRM Metrics
April 10, 2012
Navigate The Future Of Customer Service
January 30, 2012
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
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The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012
TRANSFORM CUSTOMER SERVICE TO DELIVER GREAT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

In our recent survey of 118 customer experience decision-makers, 86% said that delivering a good
customer experience is one of their top strategic priorities.1 Customer service and support are the
cornerstones of your organizations ability to meet this priority.
Forrester defines customer service as:
The ability to provision service to customers either via self-service or via an interaction with a
customer service representative before, during, and after a purchase.
Customer service is important because:
Good customer service experiences boost long-term loyalty. Customer loyalty has economic
benefits as measured over three dimensions: willingness to consider another purchase,
likelihood to switch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a friend or
colleague.2 The revenue impact from a 10-percentage-point improvement in a companys
customer experience score, as measured by Forresters Customer Experience Index, translates
into more than $1 billion.3
Poor customer service leads to increased costs. The cost of failing to meet customer
expectations is high: 75% of consumers move to another channel when online customer
service fails, and Forrester estimates that unnecessary service costs to online retailers due to
channel escalation are $22 million on average.4
Poor service experiences risk customer defections and revenue losses. For example, if a
company has 4 million customers and each spends $100 per year, the total projected revenue
for a year would be $400 million. Forrester survey data shows that approximately 30% of a
companys customers (or more) have poor experiences.5 That represents 1,200,000 customers,
and typically only about 2% of them complain to the contact center. That leaves 98% who dont
complain, or a total of 1,176,000 customers at risk to defect. At $100 apiece, this represents a
$117,600,000 loss in revenue annually.
Good Customer Service Is Hard To Deliver

Customers know what good service is, and they demand it from every interaction that they have
with a company. Forrester data shows that 68% of US consumers say that theyve had unsatisfactory
service interactions in the past 12 months. Seventy percent of online consumers expect businesses
to try harder to provide superior online customer service.6
Customer service leaders must balance the need to keep their customers satisfied against the cost of
their operations. Specific challenges include the need to:
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
July 11, 2012
Provide a consolidated customer service tool set for agents. Transactional data and customer
history are often neither consistent nor consistently available to customer service agents across
communication channels. Eighty percent of companies have nonintegrated communication
channels: phone, email, chat, and web self-service.7 This leads to customers receiving
inconsistent service, which increases costs and decreases customer satisfaction.
Follow consistent processes. Customer service agents often use multiple disconnected
applications when resolving a single customer issue. This lack of a standardized discovery
process negatively affects agent consistency and productivity, increases agent training times,
and leads to a higher level of agent turnover due to frustration with the tool set.8
Comply with policy. Regulations in industries such as financial services and healthcare are
becoming increasingly complex. Few real-time processes in customer service organizations

audit agent actions against policy requirements, leading to higher service costs due to incurred
penalties.
Monitor customer needs and satisfaction. It is critical for customer service managers to
receive direct customer feedback, preferably as soon as the interaction with the customer has
happened. It is also critical for them to understand the general impression of their service
offering as expressed in the social sphere. Service managers use this information to balance the
cost of service with overall customer satisfaction so that they can make realistic tradeoffs.
Provide cross-channel customer service in the way that customers want to receive it. In
the past 12 months, 68% of customers used the phone, 60% used help or frequently asked
questions (FAQs), 54% used email, 37% used chat, 20% used SMS, and 19% used Twitter.9
Customer service agents supporting these media types need access to the same information in
order to ensure consistent service.
The Customer Service Solution Landscape Has Matured And Consolidated

During the past several years, there has been continued consolidation and turmoil in the customer
service solutions landscape. Vendors have acquired direct competitors or companies in adjacent
spaces to broaden their customer engagement management capabilities and offerings. For example,
in 2011, Oracle acquired InQuira, a leading knowledge management solution. In 2012, it acquired
RightNow Technologies, a cloud CRM vendor that emphasizes customer experience and contact
center technology. RightNow had gone through its own series of acquisitions prior to this, acquiring
Q-Go, a natural language search vendor, and HiveLive, a social media monitoring vendor.
In late 2010, SAP acquired the mobility platform solutions provider Sybase. In 2011, the company
entered into a partnership with eGain for knowledge management. In early 2012, SAP made a move
into social media analysis with a partnership with NetBase, which provides social media analysis.
It also acquired Syclo to accelerate its push into mobility, including efforts behindmobile asset
management and field service solutions.
July 11, 2012
Since 2008, salesforce.com has made a series of acquisitions to assemble customer service assets,
such as InStranet for knowledge management, Informavores for visual workflow editing, and
GroupSwim, which is now part of Chatter. More-recent salesforce.com customer-service-related
acquisitions since 2010 include: 1) Activa Live, a cloud-based chat vendor; 2) Radian6, a social
media monitoring and engagement platform; 3) Dimdim, a collaboration vendor; 4) Model Metrics,
a cloud services consulting company; 5) Assist.ly, a customer support and help desk company for
the small business market; and 6) Stypi, a collaborative authoring tool.10
To make technology bets wisely, you must understand and navigate key trends in the customer
service technology landscape, working to:11
Empower agents to deliver optimal service. Organizations are increasingly providing agents
with the full history of a customers prior interactions over all communication channels
so agents can add value to the service interaction. They are extending business process
management to customer service so that agents can be led through predefined resolution paths
with increased efficiency. They are adopting best practices for knowledge management, tightly
tying knowledge management to case management, and adding next best action capabilities
for increased cross-sell, upsell, and satisfaction results. They are also simplifying the agent
workspace and making it more usable to increase productivity and efficiency.
Engage customers for service across channels. Customers expect cross-touchpoint service
that is, they expect to be able to start an interaction in one communication channel and
complete it in another. They are realizing true return on investment (ROI) with customer
communities and making them an integral component of their customer service solutions as
well as putting end-to-end feedback and social listening processes in place so they can better
listen to customers. Companies are also investing in their mobile customer service strategies
and capabilities to ensure that they can support their customers across the breadth of mobile
devices available today.
Understand the rapidly changing customer technologies landscape. Organizations are
deploying customer service suite solutions from a single vendor instead of employing bestof-breed point solutions. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment and outsourcing options
reduce costs and increase consistency across communication channels, and service-oriented
architecture (SOA) adoption continues its forward momentum, helping customer service
organizations integrate disparate systems as they look for solutions that will allow them to
rapidly change business processes and logic to compete in the marketplace.
CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions Evaluation Overview

To assess the state of the customer service capabilities of CRM suite solutions and see how the
vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of customer
service solutions from top CRM suite vendors across 255 criteria. The following assessment will help
you see how the top 18 CRM suite customer service products compare.
July 11, 2012
Buyers Focus On Current Offering, Future Vision, And Strength Of Installed Base
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we
developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 255 criteria,
which we grouped into three high-level categories:
Current offering. We looked at the strength of each vendors products across a wide spectrum
of CRM capabilities. In addition, we evaluated each vendors support for customer-servicespecific functionalities such as phone agent, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration,
knowledge base, chat, customer forums, and the social Web. We evaluated how the products
support common underlying workflows and assessed the suitability of the tools for different
business models, such as business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), and
business to business to consumer (B2B2C). We also evaluated each products support for
global enterprises as well as its product architecture, usability, and cost.
Strategy. We looked at the strength of each vendors product strategy and vision and how
it intends to support increasingly complex customer service requirements. Time-to-value,

product strategy, and corporate strategy are also important criteria, specifically with regard to
customer service needs.
Market presence. We gauged the size of each vendors customer base and evaluated the depth
of human and financial resources available to enhance its products and serve customers.
Market presence in this report reflects the relative importance of each CRM suite solution
vendor within the overall CRM suite solutions market for large organizations.12
Eighteen Vendors Offer A Diverse Range Of Capabilities

We included 18 solutions in our assessment of CRM suite customer service solutions, including:
CDC Software, FrontRange Solutions, Maximizer Software, Microsoft, NetSuite, Pegasystems,
RightNow Technologies (now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix,
salesforce.com, SAP (SAP Business-All-in-One and SAP CRM), SugarCRM, and Sword Ciboodle.
While Oracle chose not to provide full information for four of its CRM solutions (Oracle CRM
On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel
CRM), we placed these solutions in the Forrester Wave based on our knowledge of Oracles
solutions from past analysis and publicly available information so as to provide a complete picture
of the competitive landscape.
We did not include in the assessment solutions that specialize in a narrow set of customer service
functionalities. These include, for example, the interaction-centric (sometimes labeled eService
and knowledge management) customer service vendors, some of which were reviewed in our
2008 Forrester Wave evaluation of customer service solutions: Consona CRM, eGain, Genesys
Telecommunications Lab, Kana Software, LivePerson, Moxie Software, nGenera, and Numara
Software.13
July 11, 2012
We also did not include point solutions that specialize in only one particular aspect of customer
service operations. For instance, some of the specialty vendors not in the assessment but still
important to customer service professionals include: Jive Software, Lithium, and Telligent for
communities; chat software vendors; Varolii and other outbound customer communications
vendors; vendors focused on a single industry vertical such as Amdocs (telecommunications);
standalone knowledge management vendors such as IntelliResponse and RightAnswers; and
midmarket, multichannel customer service vendors such as Parature.
Each vendor included in the evaluation (see Figure 1):
Offers a multifunctional CRM applications suite. Each vendor included in this Forrester
Wave has functionality in a minimum of three of the following CRM subdisciplines and
tools: marketing, sales force automation, customer service, field service, partner channel
management, eCommerce, customer analytics, and customer data management. Products
promoted primarily as best-of-breed solutions for a single functional area were not included.
Provides functionality that spans multiple functional areas for customer service. The
vendors and products in the evaluation can support a breadth of customer service and support
requirements.
Has a strong presence in the customer service market. Each of the evaluated vendors has
hundreds, if not thousands, of customers and significant revenue from customer service
licenses and users.
Has a product now in general release and in use by customers. The solutions we included
have a specific release that was generally available at the time of data collection for this
evaluation with references available for contact. For this reason, we did not evaluate Oracle
Fusion CRM in this report, as the product was not yet in general release by the deadline date
for inclusion.
July 11, 2012
Figure 1 Evaluated Products: Product Information And Selection Criteria

Product version
evaluated
Version
release date
Vendor
Product evaluated
CDC Software
Pivotal CRM
6.0.10
December 2011
FrontRange Solutions
GoldMine Enterprise Edition
6.3.6
October 2011
Maximizer Software
Maximizer CRM
Microsoft
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
NetSuite
NetSuite CRM+
Oracle
Oracle CRM On Demand
Oracle
Oracle E-Business Suite CRM
Oracle
Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM
Oracle
Oracle Siebel CRM
Pegasystems
Pega CRM
RightNow Technologies
RightNow CX
Sage CRM
Sage CRM
v7.1
March 2011
Sage SalesLogix
Sage SalesLogix
7.5.4
June 2011
salesforce.com
Sales Cloud, Service Cloud
Winter 12
October 2011
SAP
SAP CRM
7.0 EhP2
September 2011
SAP
CRM functionality in SAP

Business-All-in-One
7.0 EhP1
May 2011
SugarCRM
Sugar Enterprise
6.3
November 2011
Sword Ciboodle
The Ciboodle Platform
3.7
December 2011
12
November 2011
Q4 2011 Service Update
October 2011
2012.1
January 2012
R19
July 2011
R12.1.2
December 2009
9.1
October 2009
8.2.2
November 2011
6.2
October 2011
RightNow CX November
November 2011
Vendor selection criteria

Offers a multifunctional CRM applications suite.
Provides functionality that spans multiple functional areas for customer service.
Has a strong presence in the customer service market.
Has a product now in general release and in use by customers.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
July 11, 2012
The Results: BuyerS Have Many Choices To Sift Through

The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 2):
Oracle Siebel CRM, salesforce.com, SAP BAiO, SAP CRM, and Microsoft battle for the
lead. Although Oracle Seibel CRM and SAP CRM are better suited for large customer service
deployments that demand high levels of customization and integration and salesforce.com and
Microsoft Dynamics CRM offer faster deployment times with a greater ease of use, you have to
dig deep to find differences in their core customer service capabilities. In addition, RightNow
(now Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service), Pegasystems, and Oracle CRM On Demand are
not far behind in breadth of capabilities compared with the leading solutions. The maturity of
the customer service capabilities these vendors offer is reflected in the depth and breadth of
their deployments in the marketplace. SAP Business All-in-One (BAiO) has strong customer
service capabilities, as they are derived from the SAP CRM solution.
Pega CRM and Sword Ciboodle support process guidance for the front office. Not all
enterprises have simple, interaction-centric customer service requirements. There are a set
of enterprises where agents must follow complex yet reproducible processes that cut across
functional silos and require agents to access data from both front- and back-office applications
to answer customer requests. These enterprises are increasingly relying on customer service
solutions with native business process management (BPM) capabilities that can support
highly unique and flexible process flows in order to increase customer service process
efficiencies, reproducibility, and compliance with company and regulatory policies. Sword
Ciboodle has pushed into the CRM market with its focus on the intersection of business
process modeling, customer service, and customer interaction management. Pegasystems
offers robust BPM capabilities to support multichannel, customer-facing processes with a
clear focus on customer service. CDC Softwares Pivotal CRM has gained a place in the market
among companies that need highly customized user interfaces (UIs) and strong process
management capabilities.
Oracle has expanded its portfolio of customer service solutions. Oracle benefits, and at the
same time suffers from, a portfolio of strong and competing CRM customer service solutions.
Although Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) CRM and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM are
losing ground in the market (they are targeted primarily to their respective suite user bases),
Oracle Siebel CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand remain Leaders in the overall CRM market.
With its acquisition of RightNow Technologies, Oracle has now added another customer
service Leader to its stable. This complexity of choice may confuse buyers looking for solutions
targeted to their specific business needs. This potential confusion is increased by the recent
number of acquisitions Oracle has made, including InQuira for knowledge management, ATG
for eCommerce, and Endeca for search. These acquisitions raise questions about product road
maps, technical integration points between products, the level of investment each solution will
receive, and each additions coexistence strategy with the Fusion solution.
July 11, 2012
NetSuite, Oracle PeopleSoft CRM, Oracle EBS CRM, and SAP offer ERP integration. The
integration of front-office CRM and back-office enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
provides organizations with a unified approach to managing customer interactions across
multiple channels, departments, lines of business, and geographies. More importantly, it
makes the preservation of data quality easier, as data is located in a single repository that all
systems draw from. These advantages are NetSuites core tenets; it delivers a 360-degree view
of customer data in a holistic ERP and CRM solution and provides users with a sound set of
customer service capabilities for midsize organizations. Oracle E-Business Suite CRM attracts
customers by providing ease of integration into the rest of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle
PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM attracts companies already using PeopleSoft HR and ERP solutions
by providing strong integration benefits. The SAP CRM customer base has grown significantly
in recent years, primarily within the large, predominantly B2B, SAP ERP installed base.
Sage, SugarCRM, and FrontRange Solutions offer basic customer service capabilities. Sage
SalesLogix, Sage CRM, SugarCRM, and FrontRange Solutions offer a breadth, although not
depth, of customer service capabilities at a lower price point than many of the market leaders
that focus primarily on the needs of large enterprises. These solutions have been traditionally
targeted at the midsize and small organization market, but the vendors are continuing to
improve them, and these solutions are also continuing to find a home in smaller divisions
of large enterprises. SugarCRM, with its commercial open source development approach, is
increasingly catching the interest of larger organizations in addition to its traditional base of
smaller companies and individuals.
This evaluation of the CRM suite customer service solutions market is intended to be a starting point
only. We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit
their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.
July 11, 2012
10
Figure 2 The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012
Risky
Bets
Strong
Performers
Contenders
Leaders
Strong
Oracle Siebel CRM

Sword Ciboodle
salesforce.com
Oracle E-Business
RightNow
Microsoft
Suite CRM
Pegasystems
Oracle PeopleSoft
Enterprise CRM
Current
offering
Maximizer Software
Oracle CRM On Demand SAP Business

CDC Software
All-in-One
SugarCRM
SAP CRM
NetSuite
Sage SalesLogix
Sage CRM
Go online to download
the Forrester Wave tool
for more detailed product
evaluations, feature
comparisons, and
customizable rankings.
Market presence
Full vendor participation
Incomplete vendor participation
Weak
Weak
Strategy
Strong
July 11, 2012
11
Sword Ciboodle
SugarCRM
SAP CRM
SAP Business All-in-One
salesforce.com
Sage SalesLogix
Sage CRM
RightNow
Pegasystems
NetSuite
Microsoft
Maximizer Software
CDC Software
Forresters
Weighting
Figure 2 The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012 (Cont.)
CURRENT OFFERING
What product is this
Forrester Wave evaluating?
Customer service
Field service
Business intelligence (BI)
Customer data management
Internationalization
Industry business process
support
Architecture and platform
Usability
Cost
50% 3.15 2.08 2.72 3.72 2.77 3.66 3.66 2.51 2.71 3.87 3.74 3.68 2.91 3.48
0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
STRATEGY
Planned enhancements
Application ownership
experience management
methodologies
Corporate strategy
50% 3.37 1.55 1.83 4.70 2.98 3.56 4.19 3.35 3.41 4.88 4.92 4.95 3.09 2.97
50% 3.00 1.00 1.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
10% 4.30 2.05 1.85 5.00 3.40 4.35 4.50 2.85 3.45 3.80 5.00 4.50 2.05 3.25
MARKET PRESENCE
Customer base
Employees
Financial performance
0%
80%
10%
10%
45%
10%
5%
5%
5%
3%
2.83
1.88
3.01
3.71
4.34
1.45
2.23
0.46
0.75
1.93
2.03
0.50
2.48
1.41
2.07
2.53
3.00
0.67
3.24
2.71
4.32
4.07
5.00
3.27
2.41
1.94
2.89
3.18
4.01
1.06
4.14
1.91
3.43
2.47
4.67
2.18
4.40
0.33
3.20
2.80
4.67
1.49
2.25
0.89
1.38
2.25
3.35
1.30
2.16
1.86
2.69
2.52
3.34
0.51
4.09
2.35
3.07
3.69
4.01
2.31
3.36
3.49
4.28
3.76
4.34
3.75
3.42
4.03
4.28
3.76
5.00
3.75
2.53
1.58
2.24
1.88
4.34
0.51
4.17
1.77
2.32
3.05
3.35
0.75
5% 3.74 2.76 2.91 4.37 3.49 4.87 3.91 3.15 3.41 4.23 4.61 4.61 4.10 4.39
12% 4.07 2.81 4.16 4.91 4.01 3.94 4.11 3.78 4.37 4.91 4.42 4.42 3.99 3.78
10% 4.15 3.10 4.20 4.20 3.00 3.00 3.80 4.10 4.15 3.85 3.85 2.10 4.90 2.95
40% 3.60 2.10 2.85 4.25 2.85 4.05 4.35 3.90 3.90 5.00 4.80 5.00 3.45 2.85
2.30
2.00
3.00
4.00
1.40
1.00
2.50
3.50
1.25
1.00
2.00
2.50
3.75
3.50
5.00
4.50
1.50
1.00
3.00
4.00
2.03
1.50
3.75
4.50
1.95
1.50
3.00
4.50
1.90
1.50
3.50
3.50
1.93
1.50
3.75
3.50
3.65
3.50
4.00
4.50
1.75
1.00
5.00
4.50
4.15
4.00
5.00
4.50
1.68
1.50
1.25
3.50
1.40
1.00
2.00
4.00
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

Vendor profiles
Leaders: A Range Of Solutions To Fit Diverse User Needs
Oracle Siebel CRM offers proven breadth and depth of customer service capabilities.
Oracle Siebel CRM maintains its lead with across-the-board deep CRM functionality and
the ability for extreme customization. Oracle Siebel CRM is Oracles most fully featured
July 11, 2012
12
CRM solution, with deep support for many industry verticals as well as for field service. It is
well suited for large, global deployments due to its open, scalable, robust architecture. With
respect to customer service, Oracle Siebel CRM offers very strong support for phone agents,
case management, collaboration tools, customer service analytics, business intelligence,
customer data management capabilities, business process and workflow tools, and Web 2.0enabling technologies. Additionally, it delivers strong support for knowledge base, self-service
tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social customer service, and email response
management.
However, Oracle Siebel CRM has weak social listening capabilities and very weak support
for forums. It is only available as an on-premises solution, and buyers view it as an expensive
solution that requires lengthy deployment times. Oracle has a very strong road map for future
enhancements, which attests to a commitment to support the product in the long term. It
should be noted that Oracle RightNow, a SaaS solution, is also a key element of Oracles
customer service solution and is currently available. Oracle Siebel CRM is a good fit for global,
high-volume B2C call centers that need deep customizability and integration with other
systems or that require functionality tailored for specific industries.
Salesforce.com beefs up its customer service offering. The salesforce.com vision is one of
a social enterprise where customers are at the center and drive the interactions that they
have with the enterprise. To support this vision, salesforce.com provides pervasive social
and collaboration capabilities in Service Cloud, its customer services solution. Salesforce.
com is growing quickly because of the increased adoption of the SaaS deployment model
as well as continued product evolution via both organic development and acquisitions. (For
example, salesforce.com has acquired Informavores for visual workflow tools, Activa Live
for chat, Radian6 for social listening, Assist.ly for small and medium-size business (SMB)
customer service, and Stypi for collaboration.) Salesforce.com provides very strong customer
service capabilities, including phone agent support, social customer service, and social
listening capabilities all delivered via very usable interfaces. It offers strong support for
agent collaboration, knowledge base, self-service to live-service transitions, email response
management, forums, customer service analytics, customer data management, and workflow.
However, salesforce.com lacks industry-specific solutions and relies on its extensive partner
ecosystem (AppExchange) to provide industry-specialized solutions. It also provides weak
support for field service, relying on a partner solution from ServiceMax. Salesforce.com has an
aggressive product road map with a clear focus on customer service. Salesforce.com best suits
organizations that are looking for an easy-to-use, rapidly deployable CRM customer service
application with strong social computing capabilities and that are committed to the SaaS
deployment approach.
July 11, 2012
13
The CRM functionality for SAP Business All-in-One is geared for quick time-to-value.
SAP Business All-in-One is a relatively new solution that allows customers to rapidly deploy
preconfigured business scenarios. It is geared toward midsize companies that want to leverage
comprehensive and well-integrated CRM and ERP capabilities. Common master data and
built-in business analytics ensure a single source of truth and 360-degree visibility into key
data. The products strengths include a broad subset of the deep, across-the-board CRM
functionality from SAP CRM. The product has a very strong architecture and platform and an
excellent end user and administrative UI. It has strong support for phone agents, call center
infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, email response
management, customer service analytics; case management, core field service capabilities
including mobile capabilities for field service, business intelligence, and customer data
management.
However, it has weak support for self-service to live-service transitions, although SAP is
working to address this through its partnership with eGain. SAP BAiO also has weak support
for many social customer service capabilities, including forums and social listening. SAP offers
the product with two deployment options: on-premises and hosted. The hosting option has
two payment choices for licenses: perpetual and subscription, offering customers flexibility. A
drawback to the solution is that SAP has few customer service customers that use this product
to date, so the success of this solution tailored to the needs of midsize organizations remains
an open question. The CRM capabilities of SAP BAiO are best suited for a midsize company
that wants to leverage comprehensive and well-integrated CRM and ERP capabilities.
SAP CRM continues to focus on usability and delivers strong customer service capabilities.
SAPs strategic approach to CRM is to build a comprehensive portfolio with a strong focus
on customer experience along operational, interaction, and decision competencies. The
SAP CRM customer base has grown significantly in recent years, primarily within the large
SAP ERP installed base. This is a result of SAP investing for years to improve its core CRM
solution, which boasts significantly improved usability, and offering new solution packaging,
pricing, and implementation options to improve its solutions time-to-value. SAP CRM has
robust, well-rounded customer service capabilities. It boasts a robust platform and architecture
suitable for global deployments, has excellent field service capabilities, and offers a broad
array of industry-specific solutions. Regarding core customer service capabilities, it has strong
support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, knowledge
base, self-service tools, email response management, customer service analytics, cross-sell and
upsell during an interaction, case management, and business process support. It has strong
self-service capabilities and sound capabilities for self-service to live-service transitions.
However, SAP CRM provides very weak support for social customer service, customer forums,
and social listening capabilities. Prospective customers perceive it to be an expensive solution
with lengthy implementation times. The vendor has addressed this issue through several
July 11, 2012
14
alternative solutions, including: 1) a new combined package of software and services (called
SAP Rapid Deployment Solution) that provides core sales, service, and marketing capabilities
in six to eight weeks for a fixed price, and 2) a solution tailored and priced more appropriately
to meet the needs of midmarket organizations (the CRM functionality in SAP Business Allin-One). SAP has also introduced more pre-integrations with other solutions from within
its respective corporate families to speed time-to-value. SAP CRM best suits global buyers
committed to SAP and its ERP platform that need support for customer service within the
context of end-to-end industry processes.
Microsoft offers a flexible, cost-effective customer service solution. The primary buyers of
Microsoft Dynamics CRM are upper midmarket and enterprise customers that require easyto-use, flexible customer service solutions that yield productivity gains for their customer
service organizations. As a result, Microsofts strategy is about enabling choice to deliver these
results primarily across a choice of deployment options (on-premises, cloud, partner-managed,
or hybrid), payment options (license, subscription, or financing), and access points (mobile,
Outlook client, browser, or SharePoint site). Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides strong
customer service capabilities delivered via a robust, scalable platform and architecture suitable
for global deployments and gets high marks for usability (based on the familiar Outlook UI
look and feel). It offers very strong support for native business process management and
provides strong support for phone agents, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, workflow,
customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data management.
However, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides weak support for self-service tools, self-service
to live-service transitions, chat, core field service capabilities, spare parts management,
and depot repair. It does not provide industry-specific solution sets; these are available
via Microsofts extensive partner network. It does not provide support for social customer
service or social listening, though these capabilities are on the road map for 2012. Microsoft
offers a well-priced solution compared with other vendors, especially when the solution is
bundled with the Microsoft Office suite, and the company also has a strong vision for future
enhancements. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is best suited for B2B companies that have made
a commitment to the Microsoft technology stack and that require integration with other
Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and Lync.
Oracle CRM On Demand delivers well-rounded customer service capabilities. This
product is primarily targeted to Oracles installed base of customers. It offers a straightforward

customer service solution at an attractive cost, and its SaaS deployment mode is well suited
for organizations that do not demand extensive customization. In addition, customers are
attracted to its broad array of industry solutions and prebuilt integration with other Oracle
solutions. Oracle CRM On Demand offers a very strong SOA-based architecture and platform.
It provides strong phone agent support, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools,
and customer service analytics.
July 11, 2012
15
However, Oracle CRM On Demand provides weak support for knowledge base, self-service
tools, chat, and email. It offers very weak support for self-service to live-service transitions,
chat, customer forums, and social listening. It also provides very weak support for field service.
Oracle CRM On Demand is attractive to midsize organizations supporting B2B customer
service that want a SaaS deployment method and have a moderate or large number of agents.
Oracle CRM On Demand is particularly suitable for companies that are committed to the
Oracle technology stack. Buyers also appreciate its highly usable end user and administrative
user interfaces.
Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service provides strong support for B2C enterprises.
RightNow CX provides a flexible, easily configurable, and robust multichannel customer

service solution with a particular strength in delivering consistent cross-channel customer
experiences across the Web, social media, and contact centers. The solution offers quick timeto-value due to its SaaS deployment mode, which also allows customers to test the solution
via pilots before purchasing. It also has very strong multichannel customer service, knowledge
management, and social customer service capabilities. It gets high marks for usability and
provides strong support for phone agent support, self-service to live-service transitions, social
listening, and Web 2.0 tools. It has a strong workflow engine and provides sound support for
business intelligence and customer data management.
However, RightNow CX Cloud Service has virtually no field service capabilities and does not
provide industry-specific solutions. Oracle acquired RightNow Technologies in January 2012
and rebranded its solution as Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service. This solution is the CRM
cornerstone of Oracles customer service solution. To this effect, Oracle has announced that
it has increased its level of investment in this solution. RightNow CX is best suited for B2C
organizations that offer robust web self-service and multichannel customer service to their
customers and that emphasize the value of customer experiences.
Pegasystems brings BPM to the front office. Pega CRM leverages Pegasystems strengths
in the human-centric business process management suite (BPMS) market, providing

communication channel management and predictive analytics for next-best action in order
to deliver differentiated service experiences while helping contain the cost of service. Pega
CRM delivers a robust platform and architecture and strong core customer capabilities. It
provides very strong support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, self-service tools,
workflow, and customer service analytics. Pega also provides strong support for knowledge
base, social customer service, email response management, and business intelligence. However,
Pega CRM offers few field service capabilities.
Pega CRM has a strong road map for enhancements centered around making the product
easier to use and deploy and leveraging predictive analytics and business intelligence to make
service processes more customer centric. Pega CRM best suits enterprise buyers that want to
July 11, 2012
16
strengthen their ability to support rules-based customer service processes to achieve gains
in customer service agent productivity, increased efficiency, and standardization of customer
service and the customer experience.
Strong Performers: Solutions That Have Unique Strengths Or Are Well-Priced
CDC Software delivers a user-friendly, flexible, cost-effective solution. CDCs Pivotal CRM
leverages Microsoft technology to offer a solution that is highly agile and flexible, allowing B2B
users to quickly respond to changing business needs. Thirty percent of its customers are in the
financial services industry. Pivotal CRM offers a robust architecture and platform as well as
robust internationalization and customer data management capabilities. It has strong usability,
and users can leverage its native support for rich Internet application frameworks such as
Ajax and Microsoft Silverlight to provide a better UI than can traditionally be accomplished
through Internet applications, making the UI more similar to that of desktop applications.
Overall, it provides sound customer service capabilities that include phone agent support,
email response management, customer service analytics, case management, mobile customer
service, and business intelligence. It also has attractive time-to-value. It is available as an onpremises or a hosted solution, with the hosted solution having a subset of the capabilities
available in the on-premises product.
However, CDC Pivotal CRM provides only weak support for other customer service
capabilities such as call center infrastructure, knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service
to live-service transitions, social listening, and customer forums. Pivotal CRM also has
weak native support for field service, instead leveraging a pre-integration with the Metrix
solution. Pivotal CRM has a modest road map for future development. The product suits B2B
organizations that need a well-priced customer service solution that can be highly tailored to
an organizations unique best practices and that need a tailored user experience to promote
user adoption.
Sword Ciboodle combines business process management with multichannel customer
service. Sword Ciboodle continues to focus on the intersection of business process modeling
with multichannel customer service. Sword Ciboodles target market is organizations with
complex and multichannel operations that value the vendors personalized approach to
delivering viable solutions that are alternatives to interaction-centric customer service
solutions. Industries such as insurers, utilities, banks, and communications firms are high on
the Ciboodle target customer list, as their customer service needs are complex yet processcentric. The product provides a powerful case and process management engine. It has strong
support for core customer service capabilities including phone agent support, knowledge
base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, email response management,
customer service analytics, and mobile customer service. It also provides sound support for
customer data management.
July 11, 2012
17
However, Sword Ciboodle provides weak support for social listening and business
intelligence capabilities and most field service capabilities (core field service, scheduling,
and spare parts management). Sword Ciboodle does not offer industry vertical solutions,
although the vendor targets insurers, utilities, banks, and communications firms, all of
which benefit from extending business process management to customer service. Sword
Ciboodle is a good fit for buyers that are looking for a vendor to streamline and standardize
complex customer-facing processes.
Sage SalesLogix targets the midmarket with an attractively priced solution. SalesLogix
is considered Sages premium CRM product offering. It is targeted to B2B midmarket

organizations of fewer than 1,000 users and boasts a relatively large customer base. The
product has strong usability and provides users with a consistent experience whether they are
connected, disconnected, or mobile, with multiple deployment options including on-premises,
cloud, and hosted. Its key strengths for customer service include its usability and its platform
and architecture, which can support international organizations. It offers sound phone agent
support and a solid call center infrastructure. In addition, the software and ongoing fees are
relatively low, making it attractive from a financial standpoint.
However, Sage SalesLogix provides relatively weak support for most customer service
functionalities, such as agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, social
customer service, email response management, social listening, customer service analytics,
business intelligence, and customer data management. It also has weak support for field
service. It does not support forums and has no industry-specific business processes. The Sage
SalesLogix product road map promises modest but continued improvements for the future.
Sage SalesLogix is best suited for B2B-focused organizations that value usability, have a tight
budget, and need robust sales force automation capabilities and broad customer service
capabilities but that dont want the functional complexity of other CRM solutions.
SugarCRM offers the customization flexibility of an open source platform. SugarCRMs
open source model allows organizations to take a basic CRM platform application and
build upon it using their own IT resources or add-on modules that are available through
SugarCRMs partner and developer communities. The application is offered as an on-premises
or SaaS deployment via a private cloud, a public cloud, or partner cloud deployments.
SugarCRM is emerging on the radar screen as a viable option for larger organizations. During
2011, SugarCRM made a number of announcements about its increasingly deeper alliance
with IBM. SugarCRM provides a solid architecture and platform with solid scalability,
reliability, availability, internationalization, security, Web 2.0-enabling technologies, and
usability. It is also relatively easy to deploy. With respect to customer service functionalities,
it offers sound support for phone agents, case management, agent collaboration tools, email
response management, workflow, and customer service analytics.
July 11, 2012
18
However, SugarCRM provides weak support for most other customer service capabilities,
including knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social
customer service, social listening, and customer forums. It has limited field service capabilities
and no depot repair or warranty management capabilities. It also has no industry-specific
business process support, so buyers with strong industry vertical needs will need to build
out functionality through custom development or leverage solutions via SugarCRMs
partner network. SugarCRM best suits organizations seeking a low-cost choice with deep
customization flexibility in a packaged CRM application.
Sage CRM offers turnkey integration with Sage back-office products. Sage CRM, part of
the Sage CRM product family, targets midsize and small B2B organizations. Sage priorities,
embodied in the Sage CRM product, are to offer good usability, quick deployments, flexibility,
and business integration at an attractive price point. The solution offers an intuitive UI
and strong performance and security capabilities but lacks good scalability, which is less
important for Sage CRMs target market. It provides a solid architecture and platform with
a sound call center infrastructure. In addition, the product integrates well with other Sage
back-office software products such as Peachtree and Sage ERP. Sage CRM is available as an
on-premises solution, as a SaaS solution at SageCRM.com, and as a hosted solution via Sages
partner network. With respect to customer service capabilities, it provides sound support for
agents, agent collaboration tools, email response management, mobile customer service, case
management, and customer service analytics.
However, Sage CRM has overall weak support for a broad set of customer service capabilities
including phone agents, social customer service, forums, business intelligence, and customer
data management. It has very weak support for knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service
to live-service transitions, and field service capabilities. It has no support for social listening
and does not support industry-specific business processes. Sage CRM remains a good fit for
midmarket organizations that already use other Sage back-office products and have limited
technology budgets yet require a solution that offers multiple deployment options and
lightweight customer service functionality.
NetSuites end-to-end front- and back-office solution ensures high data quality. NetSuites
SaaS-only solution targets midsize organization and emphasizes front- and back-office
integration to deliver a 360-degree view of customer data. The products functionality spans
enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting, and eCommerce as well as CRM. Although
NetSuites offering generally provides weak support for customer service capabilities, it has
good usability, a robust platform and architecture, internationalization capabilities, and
strong support for phone agents. It has sound support for case management, email response
management, business intelligence, and customer data management as well as a solid workflow
engine and sound reporting and customer service analytics.
July 11, 2012
19
However, NetSuites offering has weak support for call center infrastructure, agent
collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions,
field service, and mobile customer service. It has very weak support for industry-specific
business processes but specifically targets several vertical markets, including wholesale/
distribution, software, professional services, eCommerce, IT VARs, media and publishing, and,
more recently, manufacturers. It does not offer support for social customer service or social
listening. NetSuites offering best suits organizations that require a single-application SaaS
solution to easily manage data quality and to deliver front- and back-office functions of CRM,
ERP, eCommerce, and financials.
Oracle E-Business Suite CRMs strengths are field service and ERP integration. Oracle EBS
CRM incorporates a set of applications that includes information-driven sales, service, and
marketing. It provides easy integration with the rest of the Oracle E-Business Suite and targets
customers that desire the simplicity and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of a suite of
front- and back-office applications that improves data quality and allows all business units to
draw from the same source of data. From a customer service perspective, the Oracle EBS CRM
solution offers an open, standards-based architecture suitable for global deployments. Its very
strong field service capabilities are also noteworthy. It has strong customer service capabilities
that include case management, agent collaboration tools, knowledge base, self-service tools,
email response management, workflow, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and
customer data management. It has sound support for phone agents, self-service to live-service
transitions, forums, and mobile customer service. The solution offers on-premises or offsite
hosted deployment options, but it does not offer a SaaS deployment alternative. The solution
also provides sound support for some industry-specific CRM business processes, for example,
in the manufacturing, high-tech, and retail sectors.
However, the solution lacks capabilities in social customer service and social listening. Its cost,
lengthy implementation cycles, and lack of a solid product road map, outside of incremental
improvements to current functionality, are also drawbacks. The Oracle EBS CRM customer
service solution best suits buyers that are committed to using Oracle for their platform and
applications in order to achieve TCO economies, that require deep functionality to support
field service operations, and that need comprehensive multinational capabilities.
Contenders: Solutions That Provide Basic Customer Service Capabilities
Oracles PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM targets selected industries. The Oracle PeopleSoft
Enterprise CRM product line has a significant base of loyal customers that value the integration
benefits and usability of PeopleSofts HR and ERP suite. To this end, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise
CRM supports SOA for ease of integration. It is available as an on-premises or a hosted solution,
and it offers excellent scalability, reliability, and security as well as very strong support for call
center infrastructure all necessary capabilities for supporting its large-scale deployments. It
July 11, 2012
20
offers strong and well-rounded support for customer service, including agent collaboration
tools, knowledge base, self- service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, email response
management, forums, customer service analytics, business intelligence, and customer data
management. Its workflow and field service capabilities are sound.
However, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM does not offer social customer service or social
listening. It provides its mobile customer service capabilities through third-party mobile vendor
integration. Its only industry-specific solutions are for the public sector, particularly higher
education a focus of investment through the Campus Solutions portfolio. It is also has a
focus on HR service delivery into the existing PeopleSoft HCM installed base. As such, Oracle
PeopleSoft CRM has developed solutions to apply CRM-type capabilities to support the needs
of HR departments. It helps customers optimize HR service delivery with the HelpDesk for
Human Resources and Workforce Communications products. Customers see it as relatively
expensive solution with somewhat lengthy deployment cycles. In addition, Oracles road map for
this solution is narrow, primarily limited to targeting several selected industries and use cases.
Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM customer service solutions are suitable for existing PeopleSoft
customers that need a broad-based CRM platform to build upon, need strengths in customer
service functionality, and value the suite-play and single-vendor approach for TCO gains.
Maximizer Software offers basic customer service capabilities. Maximizer CRM offers a
breadth (although not depth) of customer service capabilities at an attractive price point and a
quick deployment time that can range from a few days to a few weeks. This solution is targeted
toward the midsize to small organization. With respect to customer service capabilities, the
product has strong usability, email response management, and customer service analytics. It
provides sound support for phone agents, call center infrastructure, case management, and
mobile customer service.
However, Maximizer CRM provides weak support for other customer service capabilities
such as knowledge base, self-service tools, self-service to live-service transitions, social
customer service, social listening, business intelligence, and customer data management. It
also has very weak support for agent collaboration tools, field service, and industry-specific
business processes. Maximizer CRM is appropriate for smaller firms and divisions of large
organizations seeking an on-premises or partner-hosted CRM suite application that includes
basic customer service functionality with a low price tag.
FrontRange Solutions offers core customer service capabilities for smaller organizations.
FrontRange has effectively targeted small and midmarket organizations with its GoldMine
solution, which is evident through the products sizable customer base. However, the
GoldMine Enterprise Edition (GMEE) product, the most fully featured GoldMine product,
has a much smaller customer base. The GMEE solution is available as either an on-premises
or hosted solution. The high points of the on-premises GMEE solution include solid case
management capabilities as well as a modern platform and architecture with high marks for
July 11, 2012
21
reliability, availability, and security at an attractive price point. It provides sound support for
phone agents, call center infrastructure, agent collaboration tools, workflow engine, customer
service analytics, and usability.
However, the GMEE solution has weak support for knowledge base, self-service tools, and
email response management. It provides very weak support for self-service to live-service
transitions, forums, and business intelligence. It has very weak core field service capabilities
and offers no support for depot repair or warranty management. It does not support industryspecific business processes. Social customer service and social listening capabilities, currently
lacking, are on the road map, as is a true SaaS deployment option. FrontRange GMEE best
suits small and midmarket organizations that seek a proven CRM solution at a low cost with
breadth but not depth of customer service functionality.
Supplemental MATERIAL
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings. Because Oracle chose not to provide full
information for four of its CRM solutions (Oracle CRM On Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite
CRM, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM, and Oracle Siebel CRM), we have not included a detailed
spreadsheet summarizing its products in the Forrester Wave tool associated with this document.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of several data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution:
Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the
evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor
calls and briefings where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
Customer reference survey. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also
conducted a survey of some vendors current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer references and products that dont fit the scope of our evaluation.
July 11, 2012
22
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their
review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and
strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based
on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based
tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
Endnotes
1
Forrester surveyed 118 customer experience decision-makers from large North American firms to gauge
the importance of focusing on a customer experience strategy and the types of customer experience
projects undertaken. See the February 17, 2011, The State Of Customer Experience, 2011 report.
Forrester data confirms the strong relationship between the quality of a firms customer experience (as
measured by Forresters Customer Experience Index [CxPi]) and loyalty measures such as willingness to
consider the company for another purchase, likelihood to switch business, and likelihood to recommend.
See the July 7, 2011, The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2011 report.
To help customer experience professionals prove the business value of a better enterprise customer
experience, we built simple models that show how revenue increases when a companys Customer
Experience Index (CxPi) score goes up. Our models show that the benefits are significant across all 11
industries we looked at. Wireless carriers and hotels have the largest potential upside: more than $1 billion.
Customer experience professionals should use the interactive models in this report to estimate the range
of benefits their firm might see. That data combined with customers verbatim comments and customer
experience stories will help customer experience leaders make a powerful case for change. See the July 7,
2011, The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2011 report.
When consumers switch from the Web to the phone, email, or chat, a companys cost to serve them goes up
dramatically. Forrester built models to add up the unnecessary cost that a retailer might incur as a result of
missed self-service opportunities. Calculations showed an extra $22,567,967 in sales and service costs that
could have been avoided if the website had enabled users to complete their goals. See the January 13, 2011,
2011 Will Challenge The Status Quo Of eBusiness Online Customer Service report.
For the fifth consecutive year, Forrester asked more than 7,600 consumers to rate the experiences they had
with 160 brands across 13 industries. One-third of the brands we asked about earned scores in the poor or
July 11, 2012
23
very poor categories. See the January 23, 2012, The Customer Experience Index, 2012 report.
6
According to Forresters North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009
(US), 68% of US consumers say that theyve had unsatisfactory service interactions in the past 12 months.
Sixteen percent of these consumers vented through social channels, such as online customer reviews,
Facebook status updates, or blog posts. See the January 13, 2011, 2011 Will Challenge The Status Quo Of
eBusiness Online Customer Service report.
Forrester surveyed 304 contact center decision-makers in North America and European enterprises about
trends in their contact centers and found that multichannel integration is anticipated in 21% of contact
centers. See the October 27, 2011, Contact Center Purchase Plans 2011 report.
Today, user-centered design isnt widely used to improve call center interactions. That needs to change.
When applied in the call center, the core activities of a user-centered design process research, ideation,
prototyping, and testing can help customer experience professionals identify and fix problems that
frustrate agents and lead to poor customer experiences. See the April 6, 2011, Why Your Call Center Needs
User-Centered Design report.
This data was derived from the North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey,
Q4 2011 (US), which asked 7,638 US customers what communication channels they had used to receive
customer service in the past 12 months.
10
Source: Marshall Lager, The 2011 Year in Review A CRM Recap, CRMsearch.com (http://www.
crmsearch.com/2011review.php).
11
Forrester documents 15 leading trends that customer service decision-makers need to embrace in order to
stay competitive. These trends focus on streamlining the customer service agent experience, focusing on
customer-centric improvements such as proactive outbound and voice-of-the-customer initiatives, and
adopting modern technologies and deployment methodologies. See the January 30, 2012, Navigate The
Future Of Customer Service report.
12
Note: The size of the bubbles is based on a compilation of the products number of CRM customers, number
of CRM seats, and financial strength. It is not based on its number of customer service customers or
customer service seats.
13
In 2008, Forrester evaluated leading customer service solution vendors across approximately 180 criteria
and found that the vendors still need to be grouped into three groups: interaction-, process-, and
record-centric. Forrester found the Leaders in the customer-interaction-centric products to be eGain
Communications, KANA Software, RightNow Technologies, Talisma, LivePerson, and KNOVA; the Leader
in business-process-centric products was Sword Ciboodle; and the Leaders in the customer-record-centric
products were Microsoft, salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel, SAP, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Entellium.
Among interaction-centric products, Genesys Telecommunications Labs, InQuira, and Numara Software
were Strong Performers. Pegasystems, Chordiant Software, and Consona CRM were Strong Performers
within the process-centric category. Within the record-centric category, NetSuite, Oracle PeopleSoft CRM,
Maximizer Software, Oracle E-Business Suite CRM, Sage CRM, SugarCRM, Infor, and Sage SalesLogix
were all Strong Performers. See the October 21, 2008, The Forrester Wave: Customer Service Software
Solutions, Q4 2008 report.
July 11, 2012
About Forrester
A global research and advisory firm, Forrester inspires leaders,
informs better decisions, and helps the worlds top companies turn
the complexity of change into business advantage. Our researchbased insight and objective advice enable IT professionals to
lead more successfully within IT and extend their impact beyond
the traditional IT organization. Tailored to your individual role, our
resources allow you to focus on important business issues
margin, speed, growth first, technology second.
for more information
To find out how Forrester Research can help you be successful every day, please
contact the office nearest you, or visit us at www.forrester.com. For a complete list
of worldwide locations, visit www.forrester.com/about.
Client support
For information on hard-copy or electronic reprints, please contact Client Support
at +1 866.367.7378, +1 617.613.5730, or clientsupport@forrester.com. We offer
quantity discounts and special pricing for academic and nonprofit institutions.
Forrester Focuses On
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Responsible for leading development and delivery of applications
that support your companys business strategies, you also choose
technology and architecture while managing people, skills, practices,
and organization to maximize value. Forresters subject-matter expertise
and deep understanding of your role will help you create forward-thinking
strategies; weigh opportunity against risk; justify decisions; and optimize
your individual, team, and corporate performance.
Andrea Davies, client persona representing Market Insights Professionals
Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to
global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 19 key roles at major companies providing proprietary
research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 28 years, Forrester has been making
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FOR: Application

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite

Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn park Drive, cambridge, mA 02140 UsA

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

July 11, 2012

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer

Why Read This Report

Notes & Resources

2 Transform Customer Service To Deliver Great

Forrester conducted vendor survey

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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

becoming increasingly complex. Few real-time processes in customer service organizations

The Customer Service Solution Landscape Has Matured And Consolidated

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

Understand the rapidly changing customer technologies landscape. Organizations are

CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions Evaluation Overview

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

it intends to support increasingly complex customer service requirements. Time-to-value,

Eighteen Vendors Offer A Diverse Range Of Capabilities

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

Figure 1 Evaluated Products: Product Information And Selection Criteria

GoldMine Enterprise Edition

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Oracle CRM On Demand

Oracle E-Business Suite CRM

Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM

Oracle Siebel CRM

Sales Cloud, Service Cloud

CRM functionality in SAP

The Ciboodle Platform

Q4 2011 Service Update

Vendor selection criteria

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

The Results: BuyerS Have Many Choices To Sift Through

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

July 11, 2012

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

July 11, 2012