Respondents to a recent survey about the brand awareness of customer relationship management providers knew the leading software providers but could not name a single full-service CRM provider.
The study, “Customer Relationship Management Services: Understanding Brand Awareness and Positioning in the CRM Services Market,” was released yesterday by the Information Technology Services Marketing Association, Lexington, MA, an adviser on services marketing, branding and sales strategies for the technology industry.
The survey questioned 400 decision makers from Fortune 1,000 companies and government agencies.
“Decision makers clearly identified Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP as the top providers of CRM software,” said Julie Schwartz, the association's vice president of research. “But when it comes to identifying specific firms that provide CRM services, half the respondents couldn't even name a single provider, and only IBM Global Services, Accenture and Siebel registered any sort of significant unaided awareness.”
Other issued covered in the study:
• Oracle, Siebel, IBM Global Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Consulting have the highest favorability ratings among CRM solutions providers.
• The most important attributes in selecting providers of CRM services were reputation and financial stability, agility and responsiveness, and ability to integrate new CRM systems with existing systems.
• Referrals from colleagues were the leading influencer when considering CRM services firms, followed by recommendations from business or strategy consultants and recommendations from CRM software vendors.
