Salesforce soars as SaaS success stimulates CRM surge

Cloud giant extends market lead as popularity of hosted models propels market to double-digit growth

Salesforce.com stretched its lead at the summit of the CRM leaderboard as software-as-a-service (SaaS) drove the global market to double-digit growth.

Figures from Gartner reveal the worldwide CRM software market grew 13.7 per cent to almost $20.5bn (£12.1bn) in 2013. Salesforce.com stretched its lead as the globe's top vendor as its revenue growth of 30.3 per cent comfortably outpaced that of its major rivals. The San Franciscan cloud giant posted annual sales of almost $3.3bn, giving it a 16.1 per cent slice of the market.

Second-placed SAP grew revenue 12.7 per cent to $2.6bn to claim 12.8 per cent market share. Oracle, in third, saw its sales grow a comparatively muted four per cent. With revenue of $2.1bn, the database titan held 10.2 per cent of the market last year.

Microsoft and IBM both grew sales by more than a fifth to $1.4bn and $792.1m respectively. The duo accounted for 6.8 and 3.9 per cent of global sales. Other vendors – the collective revenue of which added up to 50.2 per cent of worldwide CRM sales in 2013 – grew cumulative turnover by 9.9 per cent to about $10.3bn.

SaaS-based CRM now accounts for upwards of 41 per cent of the market, with Gartner claiming firms of all sizes that are replacing legacy systems are embracing the ease of deployment and ability to add new applications or functionality that using a hosted service brings. The analyst picked out western Europe as the key geographic growth engine last year, with the region posting market expansion of 15.2 per cent.

Gartner research vice president Joanne Correira said: "High levels of end-user investment in digital marketing and customer experience initiatives were the primary growth drivers of the market in 2013. CRM will be at the heart of digital initiatives in coming years. This is one technology area that will get funding because digital business is critical for companies to remain competitive."