Asia’s 2001 CRM Revenues Grew 7.8 Percent

Based on the latest findings by Frost & Sullivan, collated through interviews with at least 250 interviewees comprising customer relationship management (CRM) vendors, their partners and CRM end-users across 13 countries in Asia (i.e. Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand), it found that CRM revenues in the region grew 7.8 percent in 2001 over the previous year to hit the US$254.2 million mark.

It stated that the market would continue to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.2 percent from 2001 to 2008.

Japan accounted for 44 percent of the Asia Pacific revenues and will continue to be the dominant revenue contributor to Asia's CRM market from now until 2008 while emerging market, China, will account for 20.3 percent of the total revenue in Asia in the same year (see table 1).

Said Frost & Sullivan's industry manager, Enterprise Communications, Moaiyad Taher Hoosenally: “Although many vendors are interested in China, China is a market that is more price-sensitive than the rest of its counterparts in the rest of the region.”

With that said, however, companies such as Siebel Systems, has managed to establish a foothold in China.

As for the vertical sectors, the banking and finance industry will continue to fuel the most growth in the CRM space (see table 2).

What End-Users Want
End-users of CRM systems, especially those in Australia, Japan and South Korea, are increasingly interested in analytics or the business intelligence (BI) aspect of CRM systems. For this reason, BI will account for 25.7 percent of the CRM revenues by 2008.

End-users are also looking for industry specific solutions to suit their unique needs in the field they are in. For instance, even within a bank, users are demanding for solutions that are unique to each and every of their departments.

According to Siebel's regional managing director, South Asia, Terrance Chan, the corporate division of a bank and the retail banking of a bank would need different systems.

On the other hand, ‘out of the box' solutions are favored by small-and-medium-enterprises (SMEs).

While CRM was traditionally a system implemented by large enterprises, SMEs in Australia have started to follow suit, said the director, Technology Practice, of Frost & Sullivan, Manoj Menon.

He said: “They will however, adopt point solutions instead of enterprise wide type of solutions. Most receptive to these point solutions, or scale-down version of enterprise solutions are those in the travel agencies where customer service is of critical importance.”

Siebel Leads
Based on revenues, Siebel was ranked as the number one CRM vendor in Asia by Frost & Sullivan for the third time, beginning from 1999.

With revenues of US$2.05 billion, out of which six percent was from Asia, Siebel managed to attain an overall market share of 33.4 percent in 2001. Tailing behind are SAP (18.6 percent), Peoplesoft (5.9 percent), Oracle (5.1 percent), Onyx (3.1 percent), Peregrine Systems and Epiphany (each with 0.9 percent) and Amdocs (0.4 percent), said the research firm.

Breaking down the 13 countries where the survey was conducted, Frost & Sullivan found that Siebel emerged as the number player in all the countries except India where Oracle dominates, Philippines where the number one player is Info Systems, and Indonesia where the market has no particular dominant player at this point.

(* Please note that the market research focused on the sales, marketing, and service applications as well as BI aspects of the CRM market).

Table 1: Asia Pacific At A Glance, 2001
(Total CRM Revenues : US$254.2 Million)

Table 2: CRM Vertical Split, 2001
(Total CRM Revenues : US$254.4 Million)

Seng Li

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