The race is on to see who will capture the second tier market in SA for customer relationship management (CRM) applications, says Johan Jacobs, research analyst at Gartner Africa.
The South African market is divided into three segments: tier one (large companies), tier two (medium enterprises) and tier three (small business). This makes it difficult to ascertain which CRM application company holds the highest market share, and in turn, which CRM systems integrator is leading the CRM pack, he says.
Microsoft is very quickly capturing the tier three market segment, with SalesForce.com only just starting to gain market acceptance in South Africa. SAP has the highest share of the global market, followed by Siebel, according to the worldwide report issued by Gartner at the end of June 2006. However, "SAP is not the dominant CRM player in SA, because of the market dynamic. CRM implementations are not as yet mature in SA when compared to global standards," he explains.
Jacobs also says because SAP`s CRM product is seldom sold as a standalone CRM solution, it is difficult to compare SAP CRM market share to that of Siebel, Microsoft, E.phiphany, Amdocs and other players in this market.
Tier one companies, which are not running SAP, will typically use Siebel or one of the other high-end CRM solutions, notes Jacobs. He adds the tier three market is dominated by Microsoft, with SalesForce.com as a newcomer in the local market.
Jacobs says tier two is where the competition is "hotting" up. This is due to SAP venturing into that space along with Siebel through Siebel Hosting (a smaller version of its enterprise product) and Microsoft, which has also begun to make moves into tier two.
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