Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

“Efficiency” and “security” emerged as top issues on Great Britain’s IT chiefs’ agendas in 2007, based on findings from the latest edition of the Socitm annual IT Trends survey, published in December.

 

CRM was found to be “established in most organizations, but not yet integrated with back office.” CRM integration with the back office has shown up on more than one list as a top priority for 2008, which should serve as a clear sign.

 

It’s refreshing to see a year-end article actually looking back on what happened that year, rather than concerning itself with airy predictions about 2008. The survey report analyzes technology, budgets, manpower, product ratings, and market share, together with views and opinions about the future.

The report found that ICT spending would increase by 9 percent to $5.9 billion to finish out 2007/08, and that information security costs have increased dramatically since 2006, but “direct financial losses reported remaining low.”

 

And probably much to nobody’s shock, staff turnover has increased dramatically and use of consultants continues to rise.

The survey also found, encouragingly, “renewed pressure on public services to achieve efficiencies throughout the organization. Following the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 and the toughest financial settlement in years, this should focus attention on ICT as a means of achieving this goal.”

 

The study reports that in 2007 ICT functions are in fact well set up for this task, with their capacity and capability to deliver improvement increased. Financial resources available to them are forecast to increase by 9 percent as well in 2007, and staff numbers are predicted to rise “modestly.”

In terms of delivering efficiencies, ICT chiefs see business process re-engineering and partnership working as the best strategies, followed by channel switching, with shared services in fourth place.

 

Recently Springboard Research issued a study finding that the SaaS Customer Relationship Management market in Asia (excluding Japan) will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 61 percent between 2006 and 2010.

 

Springboard pegged the SaaS CRM market in Asia at $69 million in 2006, and expects it to reach $460 million by 2010.

 

Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, India, and China are the key SaaS CRM markets in Asia Pacific, the report finds. Of these, Australia remains the top market, accounting for 35 percent of all SaaS CRM sales generated in the region.

 

“SaaS CRM has gained acceptance in Asia’s business mainstream and the coming year will see higher adoption rates as larger enterprises opt for SaaS CRM,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager for Emerging Software for Springboard Research. “At the same time, the market is set to witness unprecedented growth in the SME sector, as a spate of new initiatives by vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle promote their CRM offerings,” she added.