Analysts

Almost all analysts have a special study group for CRM, clearly accessible from their web site. Most web sites let you browse at will, including using more or less powerful search functions, but only short articles and press releases are readable at will; others require (pricey) purchase or membership.

  • Aberdeen (www.aberdeen.com). Some reports are free, some require membership. There is a dedicated CRM area, as is the case for most analysts' sites.
  • Forrester (www.forrester.com) Forrester uses the "wave" rather than Gartner's quadrants to classify vendors in categories. Only sketchy summaries are available for the fee-based reports.
  • Gartner (www.gartner.com) An IT-influenced approach and their famous quadrants put vendors in neat categories that are useful to orient yourself to the field, although not necessarily to make your own selection. Provides useful short articles to orient the user to the fee-based reports.
  • Giga (www.gigaweb.com; don't use giga.com!) Fee-based articles only include a short summary so it's hard to decide what's in them on occasion.
  • IDC (www.idc.com). Provides lots of information about market sizes and adoption rates.
  • Meta Group (www.metagroup.com). Many articles are fee-based, although the abstracts are pretty clear and should help you decide which ones you are interested in. Free daily newsletter focused on CRM.
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