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North American Customer Service and Support Applications Markets

Product Type: Market Research Report
Published by: Frost & Sullivan
Published: September 2007
Product Code: R1-6103
Description
This Frost & Sullivan research service titled North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market provides an overview of current and forecast spending on customer service and support applications - including customer tracking, case management, service resolution and offers management technology; breakdown of market share among leading market participants; analysis of spending by end-user verticals; and analysis of spending by deployment size. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine the implications of consolidation in the marketplace, the convergence of functionality from diverse technology domains and the role of customer service and support technologies as a basis for communications-enabled business processes.

This analysis is available through our IT Services & Applications Growth Partnership Service program. With this program, clients receive industry-leading market research such as this, along with technical and econometric data and many interactive features including Analyst Inquiry Time and Client Council.

Market Sectors

Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:

By End User:
  • Contact centers
By CSS Functional Areas:
  • Case/customer tracking and management
  • Operational tools for problem resolution
Market Overview

Heightened Focus on Customer Experience Ensuring Growth


The North American customer service and support (CSS) applications market, including the markets for customer and account management, case management, problem diagnostics and resolutions, offer management and service and customer analytics, continues the slow and steady positive growth trend of all of its constituent parts. While there is no single technological trend that drives the growth in CSS applications sales, on the whole, growth is derived from an increasing enterprise focus on customer experience, as well as new products and sales tactics aimed at penetrating the underserved small and mid-sized business community. A long-standing drive to transmogrify contact centers into profit generating entities is causing many existing CSS customers to re-evaluate their technology and to seek out adjunct products to help agents cross-sell and upsell.

Interestingly, the sales model of the two leading players in the CSS market - Oracle and SAP - has diverged from the rest of the pack. Since these two market leaders also have deep inroads into enterprise back office technology stacks (including financials, human resources, supply chain, and so on), they tend to sell their CSS applications, as well as other front-office applications, as part of a larger functional suite. "At the same time, new markets have just begun to open up and the public sector, in particular, is beginning to look more seriously at CSS applications," notes the analyst of this research service. "In 2006, it became apparent that government citizen relationship management initiatives such as 3-1-1 and 5-1-1 will drive a new revenue stream for CSS vendors."

On-demand Solutions Growing in Prominence

Quiet significantly, on-demand CSS applications accounted for approximately one-fifth of total market revenues in 2006. On-demand implementations, for the most part, were clustered in smaller agent seat count deployments as larger contact centers shunned the model citing concerns about stability and guaranteed uptime. However, Frost & Sullivan trusts that enterprises will increasingly turn to on-demand applications as traditional on-premise CRM applications have failed to provide a 360-degree view of every customer and every interaction. Furthermore, CSS delivered as an on-premise implementation still faces numerous integration and customization problems, extremely high costs and a lack of extensibility. By the end of the forecast period, Frost & Sullivan expects the on-demand market to account for close to of one-third of all CSS revenues.

Overall, the CSS market experienced moderate single digit growth in 2006, generally in line with expectations. Due to the success of full suite CRM vendors tapping into their traditional large enterprise ERP base, the top end of the market is currently well saturated. "This is not to say that opportunities do not exist in this space as the best-of-breed knowledge management and service resolution management specialists are moving into the space by positioning their technology as an adjunct to traditional CRM suites rather than tackling a full-on replacement game," says the analyst. "Additionally, large enterprises are increasingly being pitched unified communications platforms by their telephony, contact center and networking infrastructure vendors." Enterprises that adopt such technologies will become sales opportunities for CSS vendors savvy enough to pitch their offerings as tools for knowledge workers and other non-contact center enterprise personnel.
Table of Contents
1 - NORTH AMERICAN CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT APPLICATIONS MARKET


Summary of Major Findings

1. Introduction

2. Scope and Methodology

3. State of the Market

4. Product Definitions

5. Measurements

6. Market and Technology Trends

7. Industry Challenges

8. Market Drivers

9. Market Restraints


Market Analysis

1. Revenue Forecasts

2. Forecast Assumptions and Factors

3. Revenue Breakdown by Type of Deployment

4. Revenue Breakdown by Industry Vertical

5. Revenue Breakdown by Size of Deployment


Competitive Analysis

1. Market Share Analysis

2. Competitive Structure

3. Vendor Comparison Matrix


Vendor Profiles

1. Vendor Profiles


Strategic Analysis

1. Strategic Growth Recommendations

Ordering and More Information
Price and Delivery Options



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