The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction:
Let’s see, important sports news wrap-up from around the world… Rafael Nadal proves that not only is Roger Federer not really the greatest tennis player of all time, as the insane are hyping him, he’s not even the best player of his generation… Ben Roethlisberger wins the highly coveted First Coffee Idiot Of The Week award, he said he’s on his way to the awards banquet … the NBA season mercifully draws to a close as Pat Riley proves what a great coach people will think any schlump off the street is if aforesaid schlump has Magic Johnson, Kareem and such talent on his roster… sources indicate that two NHL teams, one from the traditional hockey hotbed of North Carolina, are playing for something called a Stanley Cup… anything else? Vijay Singh’s got his mojo working again, another Korean wins another LPGA event… bikini-clad girls running onto New Zealand rugby games… Nothing else going on? Some tournament of some sort in Germany… nah, okay, on to the CRM.
Driven by “significant gains in license and maintenance revenue,” worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) total software revenue totaled $5.7 billion in 2005, a 13.7 percent increase from 2004, according to recently-released figures from Gartner, Inc.
“As business confidence returned in a strong commercial economy, buyers focused on products that drive revenue and expand business opportunities,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. “Robust gains resulted from strong vendor performance across the market, continued rapid adoption of on-demand products, increasing penetration of emerging markets, and buyer recognition of CRM applications as key drivers of customer acquisition and retention.”
SAP was the No. 1 CRM vendor based on total software revenue, with a 25.9 percent market share in 2005. Increased midmarket opportunity drove growth across the CRM market for both the large suite vendors and on-demand providers, such as salesforce.com. Siebel’s strong fourth quarter results drove growth, but at the expense of Oracle and PeopleSoft CRM products, Gartner officials said.
Industry specialists such as Amdocs also benefited from high demand for vertical market products.
Gartner has traditionally measured market share in terms of new license revenue. However, due to what they analyst firm terms “the emergence and increasing popularity of open-source software and buyer consumption models such as hosted and subscription offerings,” Gartner has moved to measure market share in terms of total software revenue. This includes “revenue generated from new license, updates, subscriptions and hosting, technical support and maintenance.”
Professional services and hardware revenue are not included in total software revenue.
The only significant vendor to see a drop in growth was Oracle (including PeopleSoft), which lost 11.7% market share. Salesforce.com was the only pure on-demand vendor listed in the released Gartner figures.
“Merger and acquisition activity continued relentlessly in 2005, as large vendors acquired smaller firms and as market leaders acquired each other,” Mertz said. “Market consolidation in 2005 remained a driver for best-of-breed and suite providers by offering a compelling value proposition and capitalizing on temporary buyer uncertainty. Buyers were solidly focused on new customer acquisition, expanding wallet share, process optimization, and business accountability.”
The report is available on Gartner’s Web site.
AppExchange chalks up another one: salesforce.com has announced that TARGUSinfo, a provider of on-demand data to help companies optimize interactions and provision information services, is using the Salesforce AppExchange platform to “integrate and optimize cross-department operations.”
What TARGUSinfo officials call “fast and easy customization, combined with business- critical applications downloaded from the AppExchange directory,” are offered in a product billed as allowing users to “share information across marketing, sales, finance and human resources so the company has a single, central hub for all prospect and customer communications; and for managing the recruitment of new employees.”
TARGUSinfo is one of the 22,700 companies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2006. Revenue will be recognized as the service is delivered.
...Teleperformance currently operates 2 contact center facilities in Metro-Manila comprised of approximately 2,200 workstations and over 3,400 total employees. The new Bacolod facility will open in August, and is expected to grow to approximately 600 workstations and 900 employees within its first year of operation.
Mayor Bing Leonardia, Bacolod City, is happy that his city “gets hundreds of excellent new job opportunities with an exceptional and financially strong global enterprise.”
Dominic Dato, CEO of Teleperformance USA said Teleperformance has had “tremendous and sustained success serving our U.S. client base” in our Metro-Manila operations and “we also intend to continue our growth there.”
Teleperformance USA has operations in over 40 countries.
Daniel Julien, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Teleperformance, called The Philippines “a wonderful place for U.S. offshore services. The Filipino people are smart, nice and well educated so it’s a pleasure to work with such a quality workforce.
We plan to double our capacities here in the next two or three years.”
Teleperformance (Euronext: FR 0000051807) calls itself “the world’s #2 provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services,” and operates under various brands, such as Teleperformance for customer acquisition, customer service and customer growth programs, as well as TechCity Solutions and Cash Performance respectively, specializing in technical support and debt collection.
In 2005, the Teleperformance Group earned $1.5 billion dollars. The group operates 46,000 computerized workstations, with more than 60,000 employees across 268 contact centers, including 102 contact centers directly managed in clients’ premises.
Meyer Jabara Hotels has contracted with Cendyn for its eConnectivity services for use by their hotel properties and call center within the United States.
Si Sloman, Executive Vice President of Meyer Jabara Hotels said the CRM products and “interactive marketing expertise Cendyn provides us, including Cendyn services eBooker, eConcierge, eInsight, eSurvey, ePresence and eVisibility, have the power to provide instant, effective and ongoing personalized response and service to our guests that they will remember.”
EConnectivity is billed by Cendyn officials as a middleware platform specifically designed to allow improved functional integration between Cendyn products and PMS, S&C, CRS, Web booking engines, back office and reporting, and between other hotel systems. This can “increase productivity and guest response, improve guest satisfaction, extend the lifetime of current technology and lower operating costs,” said Charles Deyo, Cendyn’s founder and president.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored content.
