Cloud CRM Solutions: How Do Top Vendors Compare?

Nucleus Research has assessed 15 CRM solutions to guide your product evaluation process.

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

The competition among CRM vendors remains fierce to snap up the remaining green field territory while still boxing out competitors and continuing to reduce customer churn. Recently the space has experienced an overhaul expanding from primarily sales-focused to be customer-centric and focused on the full customer life cycle, from first impressions with a brand to post-sale service and follow-up. As a result, the most successful vendors are offering an integrated platform that is customer-centric rather than role-centric. Additionally, investment this year focused on automation, integration with other applications and tools to reduce overall IT complexity, continued progress with integrated analytics and AI-based functionality, and enabling remote collaboration, training, and data access to accommodate the workforce-wide shift to adopt remote work en masse.

OVERVIEW

As we mentioned in last year’s Value Matrix, the CRM space is evolving to include all customer touchpoints and channels with an organization. The customer service, marketing, and back-office functionalities that for so long were treated separately from the salesforce enablement and automation technologies are becoming increasingly relevant and value-add components to vendors’ CRM/customer experience (CX) strategies. As a result, for the Document Number: V64 April 2021 NucleusResearch.com 3 functionality aspect of this Matrix, the ability of each vendor to address the entire customer life cycle via platform modules or capabilities has been given increased weight compared to previous years where core sales force automation has been primary.