Cloud Technology Driving Life Science CRM Software

The life science CRM software market has experienced renewed growth over the past few years, International Data Corporation (IDC) assessment programme said.

The growth was attributed to both the emergence and maturation of cloud technology and the broad development of new regulations affecting traditional go-to-market sales and marketing operations.

Cloud-based software has tipped in the industry and become the preferred software deployment platform for most sales and marketing organizations, the report released at the weekend contained.

This has led to wide-scale upgrading and replacement of older on-premise CRM implementations. This new study provide life science companies guidance on which CRM vendors serving the industry are best suited for consideration when evaluating a CRM upgrade or replacement.

IDC Health Insights announced the availability of  the new report, “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Life Science CRM Software 2013 Vendor Assessment which provides an assessment of the life science customer relationship management (CRM) software market, identifies how the major vendors in this space compare with each other, and discusses which criteria are most important for life science companies to consider when making a buying decision. Vendors evaluated in this report include: Cegedim Relationship Management, Media-Soft, Oracle, Sage, Salesboom, StayinFront, Synergistix, update CRM, and Veeva Systems.

Eric Newmark, IDC Health Insights' programme director of Life Science Business Systems, noted, "Most next-generation CRM systems today are designed specifically to help better automate, simplify, and advance sales rep capabilities, possess greatly enhanced mobile features, and are designed to work on a variety of tablet PCs. However, among the many vendor solutions available today, there can be a significant difference in ease of use, user interface design, and system flexibility.

“Likewise, the ability to appropriately service customers and support their business needs through technical support and diligent account management can also vary significantly between vendors. The qualities defining market share winners of yesterday were significantly different than those that will define today and tomorrow's leading vendors.”

The IDC MarketScape evaluation is based on a comprehensive framework that includes both qualitative and quantitative metrics, as well as end-user feedback, and then provides vendors with market positioning relative to or compared with other market participants.

In addition to diligently vetting customer references to verify vendor claims, this new IDC MarketScape considered the following key criteria: Vertically oriented product design, level of life science–specific market knowledge, number of customers, and total base of active CRM users; deployment compatibility with PDAs/smartphones and various types of tablet PCs (iPads, Windows tablets. etc.) and Breadth of functionality and functional flexibility (modularity)

IDC MarketScape criteria selection, weightings, and vendor scores represent well-researched IDC judgment about the market and specific vendors.

IDC analysts tailor the range of standard characteristics by which vendors are measured through structured discussions, surveys, and interviews with market leaders, participants and end users.

Market weightings are based on user interviews, buyer surveys and the input of a review board of IDC experts in each market.

IDC analysts base individual vendor scores, and ultimately vendor positions within the IDC MarketScape, on detailed surveys and interviews with the vendors, publicly available information and end-user experiences in an effort to provide an accurate and consistent assessment of each vendor's characteristics, behavior and capability.