The Forrester Wave™: Sales Force Automation, Q2 2007

Forrester evaluated leading sales force automation (SFA) vendors across 136 criteria and found that buyers must choose from a crowded group of Leaders and Strong Performers. Oracle's Siebel CRM earned the strongest overall score in the Leaders group, followed closely by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, RightNow, salesforce.com, and SAP. Overall, the evaluation reveals a market in which software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors, fueled by strong usability and well-rounded SFA features, have closed the gap with traditional on-premise competitors and make up half the Leaders bucket. SaaS specialists Entellium, NetSuite, and RightNow join salesforce.com and Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand in the Leaders category this year. This evaluation also marks the entry of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (born in late 2003) into the Leaders group. Close behind the Leaders is a crowded field of Strong Performers made up primarily of small and medium-size business (SMB) customer relationship management (CRM) players including Maximizer (Enterprise), FrontRange (GoldMine), and Sage (SalesLogix and SageCRM). Open source CRM vendor SugarCRM and the highly customizable Saratoga Systems also emerged strong out of the gate as Strong Performers.