CRM Solutions For The High-Tech Manufacturing Industry

Forrester reviewed 24 CRM suite solutions to understand their strengths and weaknesses to support five key high-tech manufacturing sector cross-functional processes: 1) quoting, agreement negotiation, and debit authorizations; 2) channel inventory management; 3) resale tracking; 4) debit claims management price protection; and 5) partner network management. We found that Oracle Siebel CRM and SAP CRM stand out with strong solutions and substantial experience with companies in the industry. Oracle E-Business Suite CRM and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM also offer capabilities to support the high-tech manufacturing sector, either natively or through integrations with other Oracle solutions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand offer solid solutions in partner network management but do not support high-tech with specialty solutions across the board. NetSuite, RightNow Technologies, and salesforce.com can help high-tech manufacturers with niche strengths but provide limited support for most of the customer processes we evaluated. In addition to doing deep due diligence about the fit of CRM solutions to meet the unique high-tech industry requirements, business process professionals must take into account the increased popularity of the software-as-a service (SaaS) deployment approach, the rise of business process management (BPM) solutions, and the rapid adoption of mobile technologies.