Salesforce Tops CRM Rankings: Capterra
Salesforce is the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) solution, according to a new infographic charting the 20 most popular CRM software solutions by Capterra, a business software resource and recommendation website.
In terms of popularity, compiled by a software solution's customer count, user base and social savvy, Salesforce leads the pack. According to Capterra, the rankings are determined by the number of organizations using the CRM software (40 percent), number of users (40 percent) and the company's “social presence” (20 percent).
Sage is close behind in second place, followed by SAP and Zoho. Microsoft Dynamics rounds out the top five.
Being the top CRM provider has its perks in a competitive business software market. In a prepared statement Capterra notes, “CRM is one of the most popular business software applications and is estimated to have over a $10 billion dollar market share.”
Crunching Numbers: Customers vs. Users
Salesforce leads by virtue of the sheer number of customers that have adopted its software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM platform. Capterra estimates that Salesforce has 100,000 customers, while second-place Sage has roughly 83,000 customers. In terms of customer numbers, Apptivo rises to third place with 40,000, Microsoft follows with 36,000 and Maximizer trails with 35,000.
However, when taking user bases into account, Salesforce falls completely out of the top five. SAP occupies the number-one spot with a staggering 8 million users, and Zoho takes second place with 6 million users. Oracle (5 million), Sage (4 million) and Microsoft Dynamics (3 million) finish out the top five.
Salesforce's Social Success
Salesforce regains its lead in the social media scene, which is unsurprising given how exuberantly the company has embraced all things social. Salesforce has strongly promoted its Chatter, a Facebook-like activity stream that keeps colleagues and co-workers informed of the goings-on of an organization. Over time, Salesforce has boosted Chatter’s social enterprise capabilities to include instant messaging and screensharing, further helping to keep its users in the loop.
Last year, Salesforce made a big bet on social media by snapping up social marketing specialist Buddy Media for $689 million and incorporating its technology into a broader Marketing Cloud strategy. Today, those efforts appear to be helping to raise the company’s social media profile.
Users “like” Salesforce. On Twitter and Facebook, the company beats out all others with 108,700 and 203,100 followers, respectively. Interestingly, the tables turn on the business-flavored social network LinkedIn.
Oracle leads with over a half-million followers (534,500) on LinkedIn, followed by SAP (199,000) and finally Salesforce (91,500).
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
