ZDNet did a survey, based on 142 company questionaires they created a CRM watchlist. Interesting enough – it covers 34 suppliers – is this really a list of winners? But this is up to you to decide. The area I really appreciate is the list of notable ‘trends’

• CRM suites going away
• Data Science on the rise
• Real lack of top of mind re: corporate giving
• Sales and marketing alignment not a theme this year

• Customer engagement more of a theme than in the past, though not overwhelmingly so
• Lots of rebranding, new markets, and management movements
• Real lack of outcome-based messaging
• Platform as a service (PaaS) gaining ground

It looks like a change in customer behaviour.  A move into the cloud, where there is no need to have a full suite in place. Key is to learn through analytics – and to get customer engagement within the mix. But there are a lot of movements  within the suppliers. To be frank – a watchlist of 34 companies, there is room for consolidation. This is going to be a very interesting year.