The past few years has seen economic setbacks or relatively subdued activities in most economies around the world. However, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) organization, we started to see modest improvements in the third quarter of 2012, and they projected a global growth during 2013. Interestingly, the IMF noted that the "main sources of acceleration were emerging market economies, where activity picked up broadly as expected, and the United States, where growth surprised on the upside and financial conditions stabilized." The following diagram illustrates this aspect—the graph on the left is from Jan 2012, and the one on the right from Jan 2013:
Analysts quantify the 2013 ERP and CRM Business Solutions market as approaching $63 billion. There are a lot of zeros in that number, illustrating the market potential. And while the economies in many regions continue to have an effect on sales cycles, thereby dampening the adoption of these solutions, business solutions continue to be top-of-mind for business leaders in their quest to deliver value to their stakeholders.
In their 2012 CEO Survey, Gartner interviewed 200 CEO and Business Executives on their market expectations and priorities. When asked what new type of information will be the most disruptive in their industry in the next five years, Technology ranked number one, followed by Legal and regulatory, Sustainability and environmental, Consumer behavior, and Digital media metrics. For the question of which technology-enabled capabilities would be an important area of investment to improve their business over the next five years, CEOs listed the following as among their top priorities:
CRM
Data-driven management
E-commerce
Business process re-engineering
ERP
Collaboration and knowledge management
Cloud business
Social organization
Enterprise mobility
Enhanced business reporting
Sustainability
Dynamic business process management
Traceability and supply chain optimization
Product cost analytics
The top categories of information that CEOs wanted in order to manage their business better are listed as follows:
Customer intelligence
Intelligence on competitors
Sales information (pipeline/growth)
Regulatory information
Costs
Internal financial information and forecasts
Industry trends data
Workforce and productivity information
Economic data
Real-time data
Business better
Geographic market data
The IMF and Gartner analysis tell us is that the economic situation notwithstanding, business leaders continue to invest in technology as a means to improve their business profitability and standing. In the technology mix, business solutions including CRM and ERP continue to be among the top priorities for these leaders. So developing an appropriate solution strategy for the organization becomes a key part of the overall strategy, which we will discuss in the next section.