Okay Here Goes – CRM Forecast 2010 – Part I

Just so you know, this year, I’ll do even better than last year (notice by adding the word “even” it makes it seem like I did really well last year but will improve over that sterling performance. Looking Back at CRM 2009 Forecast and decide whether “even” is justified or just a psychological ploy). One of the reasons for that is because of refinements to my incredibly good algorithm that drove my forecast last year.  The old version was:

eu + gw (l*bl)/i = fw, where eu = eye use; gw = guesswork; l=luck; bl=blind luck; i=intuition and fw = forecast wisdom.

But I’ve been working diligently on the algorithm – you can never be too right now can you? – and I’ve come up with some real improvements that I think can decrease the inefficiency of the forecast by at least 20X what it is today. That would be this:

(eu*cl) + gw(l*bl)*ts/20 = fw where eu = eye use; cl = contact lenses; gw = guesswork; l = luck; bl = blind luck; ts = total speculation; and 20 of course equals the amount to decrease the inefficiency by.

Of course, this is a HUGE breakthrough in analyst forecasting that I don’t think can be underestimated. Its so big that I’m giving this formula to the world so that you can predict almost anything you want by plugging the specifics into these parameters.  For example, I found that the Mayan calendar is actually off and the world will end in January 2013, not December 2012 as previously thought.

Okay, now on to the forecast. Like last year there are things to note, three to be exact:

1. The number in parentheses ahead of the forecast is the likelihood of the event happening reflected in 1 – 10 in which 1 is not real likely – in fact as likely as Tiger Woods….no I won’t go there.
2. Once again, I have the right to invoke the Pundit Immunity Clause (PIC) which has undergone significant revision with the November meeting of the Pundit Standards Committee made up of a bunch of people who think they know everything. It now reads:
   “In the event of an incorrect forecast, or a specious speculation, as a pundit, I invoke my right to not be criticized or maligned or physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually assaulted – or just have my butt handed to me.”
3. Because of the ungodly size of this post, I’m going to do the splitscreen thing again.  The first half of this post (with the LATAM forecast from Jesus Hoyos and the first 5 “predictions”) will be on ZDNet (here in other words). The second half (starting with #6) will (simultaneously) be published on PGreenblog.  Both of these will magically appear on the sites at 7:00am ET on Monday morning, December 21 so if you’re reading this, happy week and more especially, Happy Holidays to one and all.

Okay, so watch for my invocation of the PIC throughout the year and let’s get ready to rumble (or possibly, bumble)

First, before I begin, I want to give you a holiday gift.  Let’s give a big rousing and warm welcome to Latin American CRM thought leader, Jesus Hoyos, who I’ve invited to give you his perspective and forecast for Latin America in 2010.  If you remember, Jesus already contributed to PGreenblog on a state of the state of CRM in Latin America back in March 2009. There, he was taking a look at the “as is” state of LATAM. Now I’ve invited him back to look at the “to be” state of LATAM in 2010.

Jesus, take it away, hombre.

My Latin American 2010 CRM Forecast

Jesus Hoyos, Solvis Consulting

Doing a forecast of CRM trends and vendors success will do is always a challenge in the Latin American market due to the many differences between countries and regions. When you look at Latin America, you need to see it in 5 regions – Brazil, Mexico, Southern Cone, Andean, and Central America/Caribbean. If you look at most of the IDC or Gartner reports regarding the CRM market in Latin America, most of the time Brazil has like 45% of the market, Mexico around 25% and the rest is divided among the other countries. And it is very clear that Brazil owns the CRM market, since Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com are quite busy selling CRM in Brazil.  The Oracle and SAP conferences last year where done in Sao Paulo and Rio, respectively. I do not see this changing.

My forecast won’t be about growth and vendor success (this will be part of another post), my forecast will be about how some CRM trends will evolve in Latin America. IDC and Gartner have good reports about the CRM market in Latin America.

Let’s start with Social CRM.

The recent Facebook growth in Latin America represents a unique growth for many. This is a good opportunity for CRM vendors to start building Social CRM applications for the Colombian, Mexican and Argentinian markets. These applications need to be specific to each market due to the differences between countries. What I see here is that if CRM vendors do not to start moving into this area of social media, many marketing and digital agencies will close this gap. During 2009 I have seen many agencies producing social CRM widgets, landing pages and web applications which collect customer and prospect data. In 2010, I see this trend to continue, agencies will own the social media and social CRM market place, unless CRM vendors start producing mechanisms to create social CRM applications.

Cloud and SaaS

I see growth in this area, but not a major growth in SaaS. I see many companies doing private cloud computing and hosted implementations. The fact that the enterprise data is outside the country is still a security concern.  Some countries have some regulations against this, but at the end, it is a cultural gap and lack of understanding about SaaS. According to a MundoContact’s 2009 CRM and Call Center study (read my review here in Spanish), 22% of call centers in Mexico are using SaaS CRM applications. This figure is due to the expensive upgrades and budget cuts for maintenance fees from the on-premise CRM applications. I expect this 22% percent to increase in 2010.

OpenSource

Tools like SugarCRM, vTiger, Joomla, WordPress and Asterisk will continue to dominate the Small and Medium Enterprise (PYMES – pequeñas y grandes empresas) market. Pricing is key here. These implementations are a mix of SaaS, hosted and on-premise. Most of them are hosted in local data centers in each country. I expect these tools to do very well in 2010 as hosted solutions…