As a pre-cursor to a formal procurement process for a customer relationship management software platform, The Transformation Group within Casey City Council recently undertook desktop research and a Conference Room Pilot. It was specifically aimed at better understanding the functionality of the top three software vendors as evidenced from the desktop research.

The CRM selection ratings per criteria are based on a review of Gartner and Forrester Research reports across these major areas of CRM functionality:

• Customer Engagement Centre
• Business Information
• Real-time interaction management
• Artificial Intelligence
• Content Services Platforms
• Multichannel marketing hubs
• Field Service Management
• Configure, Price & Quote
• Multi-experience Development Platforms
• Digital Experience Platforms
• Internet Of Things Platforms
• Digital-first customer service
• B2C eCommerce

The CRM Selection overview is based on the base requirements for a Victorian Metropolitan Council, broadly speaking, that being 1,500+ staff addressing a community of approximately 350,000. As such, the relative importance of each area to a Victorian Interface Council is weighted to a scale described in the document. A list of selection criteria that were out of scope from this document are included in the source documents referred to in the Appendix as are the full desktop research findings.

The chart below summarises the findings which place the top three vendors in order as Salesforce, Microsoft and Oracle.

This matrix is populated from the Gartner and Forrester reports for the various key CRM modules. The Criteria definitions are listed in Criteria Definitions. The Gartner Magic Quadrant images and Forrester Wave images drawn upon the selection criteria are listed in the Appendix.

These are the criteria ratings we have applied from the images of Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Waves found in Google searches:

Position 1 = 4

Position 2 = 3

Position 3 = 2

Position 4 = 1

The selection criteria matrix without weighting applied is in the section: Non-weighted Selection Criteria Matrix.

CRM selection criteria weighting

The CRM selection criteria are weighted as described in the section: Criteria Weighting.

These items have not been scored:

• In the Business Intelligence space, Salesforce has acquired Tableau in 2019 but not tightly integrated it yet. Based on past experience, this may take up to two years.
• None of the CRM vendors evaluated were listed in the Magic Quadrant for the criteria of Digital First Experience Managers. See the criteria definition for Digital First Experience Managers for details.
• A rating report was not found for Virtual Assistance however this is partially covered by the for Digital First Experience Managers segment. Gartner expects the pure play Virtual Assistant vendors will be rolled up by the major CRM vendors over the course of the next two years.

Cautionary note on Reports

• Gartner and Forrester have been criticised for vendor favouritism. A strong critique can be found here: https://www.brightworkresearch.com/gartner/category/the-magic-quadrant/

Definitions of criteria as supplied by Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/en/glossary

For example, you can look up each of the criteria below:

These are the criteria weightings for CRM functionality based on the requirement of their centrality to the CRM ecosystem rather than being provided as best of breed point solutions.

These are the criteria ratings applied to define the centrality of the functionality listed above to the CRM mission at a Metropolitan Interface City Council.

• Critical = 4
• Important = 3
• Desirable = 2
• Low importance = 1

Below are lists of Non-functional, ecosystem integration and cost related criteria that are out of scope in this exercise. Other areas of interest but also out of scope are those associated with a mature enterprise solution including an app ecosystem and an integration layer.

Beyond the typical areas of non-functional considerations such as scalability etc. there is a layer of requirements that become extremely important in the mid stages of CRM selection. These include the criteria below.

• Usability Ease of use for end users
• Configurability Ease of configuration.
• Cost per developer hour
• Developer ecosystem maturity Attractiveness and maturity of training and career pathways
• Developer ubiquity Ease of building a development team
• Developer team stability The likelihood of maintaining a core development team
• Documentation Completeness, quality and applicability by user level of technical and end user documentation
• Support costs Cost of supporting the software
• Tech debt loading The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.

It is worth considering the extent to which the selected CRM will integrate with the Azure corporate enterprise ecosystem. This is a partial list of relevant aspects of the Azure ecosystem to consider.

• Cloud storage
• Office365
• .NET framework
• Azure AI Artificial Intelligence
• Cognitive Speech Services Speech recognition solutions
• Custom Vision Image recognition solutions

• Licence fees The commonly held reputation for licence fees
• TCO Total Cost of Ownership

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