Social CRM Vendor Landscape

Today, we will take a look at major vendors of the social CRM market. The market is relatively new but has been developed, because of the explosion in the use of social tools by enterprises looking to develop a competitive edge in marketing. Gartner has released the magic quadrant since 2010 to provide the information to identify major players in this market. Here is the latest latest edition of "Magic Quadrant for Social CRM":

To even get into the MQ at all, vendors must:

• Cover at least two of the three main areas of CRM — sales, marketing, customer support
• Must have references from at least five clients who actively using the product in 2011
• Must have shown at least a 20 percent revenue growth in 2011
• Include functionality for marketing, sales or customer service departments — such as tools for social monitoring, managing customer communities, fostering customer interaction and and managing integration with traditional CRM applications. 

What is interesting about the Magic Quadrant is that it is one of the only MQs researched and published this year where the Niche Players vastly outnumber both the Leaders and the Challengers, while only two companies made it into the Visionaries quadrant.

The Leaders include Salesforce, Jive and Lithium, while Oracle — surprisingly enough — only made it into the Challengers Quadrant, along with Bazaarvoice.Whether the low number of Leaders is due to the fact that Social CRM is still an emerging market remains to be seen. But, Gartner notes, one of the key characteristics of the market over the past year has been a burst of acquisition activity as vendors jostle for position.

Just for information, here is a list of basic information of vendors categorized in the MQ into leaders, challengers, and visionaries.

Vendor Name	Founded	Head Quarter	Employees	Social CRM Products
Salesforce.com	1999	USA San Francisco, CA	9,800 (2013)	Marketing Cloud Salesforce Chatter
Jive Software	2001	USA Palo Alto, CA	360 (2011)	Jive SBS (Social Business Software)
Lithium Technologies	2001	USA Emeryville, CA	200	Lithium Social Community Lithium Social Web Lithium Social Intelligence
Oracle	1977	USA Redwood Shores, CA	118,119 (2013)	Oracle Social CRM Applications
Bazaarvoice	2005	USA Austin, TX	410 (2009)	Bazaarvoice Conversations Bazaarvoice Intelligence Bazzarvoice Connections Bazaarvoice Media
Telligent Systems	2004	USA Dallas,TX	>100	Telligent Community Telligent  Enterprise Innovation Cast Telligent Analytics Telligent Evolution
Attensity	2000, merged 2009	USA Palo Alto, CA	<100	Attensity Pipeline Attensity Analyze Attensity Command Center Attensity Respond

In the MQ, the Leaders are those who provide technologies that benefit both the company and the community — and also benefit enterprises by demonstrating ROI. They must also demonstrate support for multiple CRM processes. Let's have a look at more details of those vendors who made it into the Leaders quadrant.


1. Salesforce.com
Strength

Salesforce.com demonstrates a strong vision called "social enterprise". This vision is broader than CRM (but inclusive of it), and covers areas like human capital management as well as internal collaboration across the whole enterprise. In addition, salesforce.com has the broadest number of social CRM use cases, including idea management, brand and reputation monitoring, social campaigns, service listen and respond, social sales collaboration. Although these use cases are not of equal depth, the vendor continues to product development efforts on adding depth and filling gaps. 

Weakness

First, Salesforce.com has made aggressive acquisitions. This means potential risks of a incoherent whole systems. In addition, Salesforce.com needs to add more-advanced forms of social analytics. Other vendors, such as Attensity, NetBase, and Jive, are already offering advanced forms of social analytics. At the moment, salesforce.com relies on partners to fill this gap.

2. Jive Software
Strength
Jive has broadening partnerships. Its partnership programs is more developed than most  competitors, with big consulting and agency names (such as IBM, Capgemini, Cognizant, and PwC). Furthermore, Jive's vision for social is strong and broad. Jive's vision is wider than just CRM and enables it to embrace new major use cases within its existing customers. In 2012, Jive launched Social Intranet, Social Customer Service, and Social Marketing & Sales Enablement, and will build out more-specific solutions over time in those areas.

Weakness

Jive has the need for improved integration with existing CRM, content management systems, and automation systems. In addition, Jive has room for improvement in social analytics. Although it is already leveraging its investments in acquiring Proximal Labs (a data mining  start-up) in areas of social-graph-filtered search results, Jive's more-advanced uses for adaptive intelligence will be a potential differentiator. 

3. Lithium Technology
Strength
Lithium offers ROI models for clients. In the model, Lithium assigns success managers and even moderators to help clients establish goals and extend and measure success factors for positive business outcomes. In addition, Lithium has a wide range of use cases in customer service, marketing and sales. The vendor is especially great in customer service, recently adding customer service workflow, such as prioritization and escalation.

Weakness

First, Lithium's analytics have room for improvement. For example, its analytics do not suggest prescriptive actions when elements in customer behavior changes. Second, Lithium should continue to strengthen social marketing functions, including integration with  applications such as multichannel campaign management. Furthermore, evidences of use cases in social sales and product review are limited.

This landscape of vendors in the social CRM market is helpful for customers in identifying the vendors that have sufficient financial muscle to survive in this very turbulent market. The market is still developing, and according to Gartner's Social CRM report, the space is likely to see a lot of consolidation through acquisitions.