Though no vendor received top marks across the board for enterprise marketing platforms, Unica led in the business-to-consumer space and Siebel Systems was the top choice for business to business, according to a new Forrester Research report.
In “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Marketing Platforms, Q1 2006,” Elana Anderson, vice president and research director at Forrester, compared leading EMP vendors. EMP is an evolution from what many previously called marketing automation.
Forrester surveyed 300 marketers in December about their approach to buying technology. More than three-quarters said they wanted a more comprehensive, integrated application suite. With that as backdrop, Forrester evaluated the progress companies have made toward extending their capabilities.
“Unica is tops because of its strong campaign management and usability,” the report found. “Unica also has the strongest strategic vision in the market and is focused on building out its marketing suite to support relationship marketing, Internet marketing and brand marketing.”
Forrester conducted lab-based evaluations in October and November. It also interviewed nearly 50 vendor and user companies including Autodesk, Bank of America, Home Depot, Kimberly-Clark, Limited Brands, L'Oreal, Pfizer and Washington Mutual.
Unica's legacy in campaign management pays off in the BTC scenario, Forrester concluded.
“We hear from clients and service providers alike that Unica is the 'gold standard' when it comes to meeting the needs of sophisticated, high-volume direct marketing organizations,” Anderson wrote.
The report also said Siebel had the broadest overall solution and won the BTB scenario.
“According to the clients we spoke with, Siebel's v7.7 release in the spring of 2004 was a huge leap forward, and the solution scored well in both of our evaluation scenarios,” the report said. “The campaign design and segmentation tools are very strong and worthy of consideration by BTC marketers, particularly those that already use other Siebel applications.”
As for the other vendors mentioned, the study found:
· Aprimo provides best-in-class tools for managing marketing activities and assets. Aprimo is a good choice for firms that want a best-of-breed marketing resource management solution or large BTB companies seeking a full marketing suite that blends top-notch process management, dialogue marketing, lead management and asset management.
· Oracle: Oracle Marketing (v11i) is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The functional strength of the solution lies in its overall breadth.
· SAP is making headway with SAP CRM Marketing in its installed base. The solution is a best fit within SAP's installed base, and the vendor has focused on building capabilities to meet the needs of marketers in the consumer packaged goods, manufacturing and high-tech industries.
· SAS' Customer Intelligence suite stands out for its best-in-class data mining, strong integrated analytics and solid campaign management.
· SSA Global acquired Epiphany in August, rounding out its ERP capabilities with Epiphany's full suite of CRM functionality. The SSA Marketing Suite now provides best-in-class interaction management tools, well-integrated analytics and a solid campaign management solution.
· Teradata CRM version 5.1 has strong functionality for analytics and customer segmentation. The application focuses only on direct marketing.
