CRMindustry.com Announces the Results of 2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Survey

Santa Barbara, CA, January 17, 2008 -CRMindustry.com (http://www.crmindustry.com), an online resource dedicated to providing the latest news, trends and research that directly relates to Customer Relationship Management (CRM), announced today the results of its “2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management” Survey.

The research, conducted in November - December 2007, surveyed high-level CRM executives representing a range of industries. The data gathered provides valuable insight into the issues and challenges important to those responsible for CRM in their organization.

Email invitations to participate in the survey were sent to CRMindustry.com members. Participants fall primarily into vice president/director/manager categories and 40% of respondents report having 500 or more employees in their organization. The 40 participating companies span a range of industries, with the largest percentage — 37.5% — in the technology sector. A little over 34% of responding organizations have CRM technology budgets of more than $250,000 or more a year.

Key Findings from the survey include:

- 53% of respondents currently use an in-house CRM solution. The top three factors that motivated choosing an in-house solution are Cost (48%), Flexibility (41%) and Speed to Implementation (41%).

- 22% of respondents currently use a hosted CRM solution. The top three factors that motivated choosing an in-house solution are Speed to Implementation (83%), Cost (56%) and Scalability (44%).

- 25% of respondents currently use a combination of in-house and hosted CRM solutions.

- The majority of respondents (56%) did not perform any benchmarking before choosing their CRM vendor. However, 66% did have measurable goals in place to evaluate the success of their CRM implementation.

- 58% report that their CRM implementation was done within the estimated budget. Of those that went over budget, the majority (59%) cited “the rollout took longer than expected” as the primary cause.

- 56% report that their CRM implementation went over the estimated time frame. Of those that went over their estimated time, the majority (74%) also cited “the rollout took longer than expected” as the primary issue.

- Increased user productivity is the most relevant thing organizations have achieved through implementing CRM technology, with 38% of respondents citing this factor.

- The majority of respondents (81%) are happy with the overall performance of their CRM technology vendor.

To view the full executive summary and graphs, click here:
http://www.crmindustry.com/industry_research/crmsurvey08.htm

CRMindustry.com allows visitors to sign up for free membership, which gives them access to breaking news, research and tools to help them meet the high expectations of their customers in today’s competitive environment. Members are senior-level decision makers responsible for Customer Relationship Management, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service and Support or the overall operations of their company.

Contact Information

Carolyn Healey

Public Relations

CRMindustry.com

Contact via E-mail