The worldwide customer relationship management services market was $22 billion in 2001, a 10.6 percent increase from $19.9 billion in 2000, and will jump to $25.3 billion in 2002, according to a report from Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Inc.
The market will remain robust for the next several years, reaching $47 billion by 2006, according to the study, titled “CRM Services Market Size and Forecast, 2001-2006.”
While development and integration continued to be the dominant service line in 2001, information technology management services and business management services also grew significantly, and are expected to contribute increasingly to the overall market for CRM services.
“In the coming year, the focus of CRM initiatives is expected to turn from operational and tactical CRM initiatives to CRM analytics and business intelligence, with Web-based customer support stabilizing, though still quite important,” said Debashish Sinha, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest's IT Services program. “The CRM services market will become increasingly challenging for most service providers, and continued success in this market will depend on the vendors' ability to look beyond implementation services and focus on developing CRM strategy and architectures that map with specific process expectations.”
Gartner Dataquest analysts said one key to the market growth is that the small-to-midsize segment is set to grow faster than the broader market, as large enterprises pause to re-evaluate their CRM strategies.
