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Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation09 July 2015 | ID:G00269153

Analyst(s): Robert P. Desisto, Tad Travis

SummaryIT leaders supporting sales will find expanded options in the sales force automation marketwith new vendor entrants and one less option with the removal of former industry leaderOracle Siebel CRM.

Market Definition/DescriptionThis document was revised on 21 October 2015. The document you are viewing is thecorrected version. For more information, see the Corrections(http://www.gartner.com/technology/about/policies/current_corrections.jsp) page on gartner.com.

Sales force automation (SFA) applications support the automation of sales activities,processes and administrative responsibilities for B2B organizations' sales professionals. Corefunctionalities include account, contact and opportunity management. Additional add-oncapabilities focus on improving the sales effectiveness of salespeople. Among thosecapabilities are sales configuration, guided selling, proposal generation and contentmanagement, and sales performance management support, including incentivecompensation, quota, sales coaching and territory management.

Magic QuadrantFigure 1. Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Aptean

Aptean's Pivotal CRM has stabilized since Aptean bought it from CDC Software. Aptean isagain a Niche Player in the Magic Quadrant and has stabilized since being bought from CDCSoftware. Aptean's financial resources have helped improve the Pivotal CRM mobile app forthe 6.5 release in April 2015. Pivotal 6.5 also features a cloud delivery option through AmazonWeb Services. Companies leveraging Aptean's ERP portfolio should consider Pivotal CRM forpotential integration opportunities. Throughout the years, Pivotal has gained intellectual

property in key industry verticals, such as financial services, insurance, healthcare,manufacturing and hospitality. ERP products (Ross ERP, Made2Manage ERP and Axis ERP)could benefit from prebuilt integrations among those solutions.

STRENGTHS

Configuration and extensibility: The Pivotal application development platform is based onMicrosoft technology and leverages C#. Customer references for this Magic Quadrant gavePivotal above-average ratings in this area.

Customer loyalty: Many customers have been using Pivotal products for more than 15 years,well beyond the normal replenishment cycle of most software applications. The averagetime that customers of Pivotal have been using its product was in the upper rangecompared with other vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant.

Microsoft centricity: Customers that are more Microsoft-centric will find Pivotal CRM's useof the Microsoft technical stack, and the integration with other Microsoft-relatedapplications (such as SharePoint and Outlook), attractive.

CAUTIONS

Cloud validation: In a market in which SaaS dominates most new business opportunities,Aptean needs to accelerate its cloud business. Gartner has not spoken to a Pivotal CRMcustomer using the new cloud delivery approach.

New business: Aptean's Pivotal needs to be part of more discussions for shortlists. This willimprove once the cloud delivery option becomes more generally accepted and used bycustomers.

Reinventing brand: With Pivotal CRM, Aptean has as much breadth as most CRM vendorstoday. The problem is its brand does not put it "top of mind" of customers considering CRMapplications. Pivotal is considered an on-premises application from the early crop ofvendors in the CRM market, and Aptean's challenge is to reinvent the brand so as to be seenas more of a mobile/cloud vendor and current-generation player. Some vendors from thisera have achieved this, while others have not.

Base

Base is a new entrant to the Magic Quadrant this year, entering on the strength of itsproduction vision and mobile capabilities. Founded in 2009, Base is backed by $23 million inventure capital and has acquired more than 6,000 customers to date. Base provides a SaaS-only SFA offering appropriate for small or midsize businesses (SMBs), particularly those withfewer than 300 sales users. Base bundles a full range of SFA capabilities, including account,lead, opportunity and forecasting management into its basic product. Base offers twoadditional product variations: The top-end enterprise edition adds a document repository,advanced reporting and additional permissions above the basic offering; and with theopportunity scoring functions, Base is one of the only SFA vendors to put native predictiveanalytics in its solution.

STRENGTHS

Vision: Base has an innovative take on SFA functions. Rather than organizing users' workaround objects, Base users can work from a notification feed, allowing them to easilyexecute sales functions from the feed with precompleted activities and templates.

Mobile: Base has strong mobile capabilities, due to the advantage of being an early mover increating a mobile-first SFA solution.

Sales execution: References rate Base higher than similar SFA vendors for being easy-to-do business with. In the preceding year, Base acquired approximately 1,000 newcustomers and grew its revenue by 177%.

CAUTIONS

Implementation maturity: Gartner's survey of references indicates that the average Baseimplementation is only 70 users, which is the second-lowest average of all vendorsevaluated. The average implementation has been live for a comparatively low 1.75 years.This means that Base may be hard-pressed to demonstrate that its solution meets theneeds of midsize and large organizations, particularly those with complex processes.

Implementation delivery and support: Be prepared to self-implement the system. Base toutsa four-week average implementation time, but Gartner notes that this is only relevant tocompanies with well-rationalized processes, clean data and no integration requirements.Base has a very small professional services organization and has not secured anysignificant integration partners to its network.

Functional capabilities: Some references note some gaps that will matter to companies withcomplex processes. Base's functions for account/contact duplicate management and forintegration with commercial data services ranks much lower than those of similarcompanies. Some references give it comparatively low scores for forecasting capabilities.Base has a document repository, but it does not offer contextual documentrecommendations.

Bullhorn

Bullhorn makes its first appearance in the Magic Quadrant this year, based on the quality of itsAPI-driven application architecture, its applicability for relationship selling and its customeranalytics. Bullhorn provides a mobile-first, SaaS-only solution built on open APIs, which meansclients can customize the solution and integrate it with other SaaS systems. Bullhorn providesalmost all of the important SFA functions, but it also has relationship management functions,such as engagement analysis and surveys, which are not common to other SFA systems.Bullhorn is a Niche Player because 75% of its revenue comes from the staffing industry;however, Gartner notes that Bullhorn's product also applies to other verticals — particularlySMBs that are driven by relationship-selling, such as financial services.

STRENGTHS

Usability and functionality: Respondents in the Magic Quadrant survey give Bullhorn highmarks for usability. Gartner notes that the mobile application is built around user actions,not objects, which means that users have less searching and manual data entry to perform.The system also features strong email integration.

Platform: Bullhorn is one of the few SaaS SFA companies to have built an API-centric userinterface. This means that clients can customize the application by drawing from a library ofprebuilt actions, saving time that would otherwise be spent in coding business-logicfunctionality. To date, clients and partners have built more than 1,500 applications on theBullhorn platform, including 63 solutions built specifically by Bullhorn's partners.

Sales process analytics: The Bullhorn system offers unique customer intelligence functions,such as sentiment analysis and engagement index scores. Sales performance analytics areembedded into every UI page, which makes it easier for managers to monitor teamperformance and for representatives to view real-time analytics.

CAUTIONS

Implementation scope and complexity: Bullhorn implementations average only 11 users percustomer, with its largest customer holding 2,000 seats. Bullhorn has not yet built a largepresence outside of the staffing industry.

Functionality: Bullhorn's forecasting and territory management capabilities lack thefunctional depth common to its competitors in the SMB market.

Partner network: Bullhorn does not have a network of system integrators (SIs) or value-added resellers (VARs), which means that prospects must hire Bullhorn ProfessionalServices for complex implementations.

CRMnext

Although CRMnext remains a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant, it has improved itspositioning due to improved client satisfaction scores. CRMnext has core sales functionality —such as opportunity management, pipeline management and analytics — that applies tomultiple industries; however, CRMnext's main focus is on the financial services industries —such as banking, securities, insurance and asset management. Based in India, CRMnext has apresence in the Asia/Pacific region and in the Middle East. CRMnext continues to win largecustomers, of more than 5,000 users, primarily in the Indian market. CRMnext supports SaaSand on-premises with the same product, and both versions are priced in the lower range forSFA solutions. CRMnext has direct sales channels in India, Southeast Asia and the MiddleEast, but it relies on partners outside of those regions.

STRENGTHS

Southeast Asian and Indian presence: CRMnext is very strong in the Indian and SoutheastAsian markets, having secured some very large customers in the regions.

Proven scale: CRMnext has several large customers that support an average of more than2,500 active users on its implementations, and its application can be implemented on-premises or hosted.

Attractive price point: CRMnext is relatively competitive on its price point compared withmost of the alternative vendors in the SFA marketplace.

CAUTIONS

Ability to deliver on 2015 roadmap for sales capabilities: CRMnext has a notably aggressiveroadmap planned in 2015, spanning both sales and nonsales capabilities. The plans includecapabilities that will be important to IT leaders supporting sales, including an improvedmobile app, better UI experience, expanded analytics and gamification. Given the scope ofthese plans, which exceed the scope of similar-sized SFA vendors, Gartner cautionsprospects and current customers to monitor the vendor's ability to deliver SFA capabilitiesthis year.

Limited geographical reach: CRMnext has very limited sales or support coverage in NorthAmerica or Western Europe. Its presence is limited to core markets in India, Southeast Asia,Africa and the Middle East.

Lack of robust independent software vendor (ISV) ecosystem: CRMnext does not have anextensive ecosystem of third-party software providers to fill functionality "white space"within its product offering.

Infor

Following its acquisition by Infor, Saleslogix is again in the Niche Players category of theMagic Quadrant; however, it did not maintain the same position that it achieved last year. Inforacquired Saleslogix from Swiftpage during September 2014, making this the second time thatSaleslogix has been acquired in less than three years. The acquisition gives Infor anestablished "CRM for sales" product for its roster of enterprise software. Since the acquisition,Infor has taken preliminary steps to revitalize Saleslogix: It has doubled the Saleslogix R&Dstaff and spending and updated the user interface, aligning the sales application with otherInfor offerings. Consistent with its focus on building enterprise software for specific verticals,Infor will aim its CRM solution at industries (particularly manufacturing and healthcare) thatalign well with the needs of its existing Infor customer base. These efforts are notable, butthey were not enough to keep Saleslogix in the same position it earned in last year's MagicQuadrant.

STRENGTHS

Platform roadmap: Infor has committed to moving Saleslogix onto its ION messaging busthis year, which will benefit Infor ERP customers and be attractive to prospects looking for acomprehensive opportunity-to-cash solution.

User experience: Infor has a better focus on application ease of use than its largercompetitors. The Web browser version of the system contains several design bestpractices. Infor can be embedded in Microsoft Outlook using the Microsoft Outlook Xbar.Infor has also inherited a compelling vision for mobile capabilities from Swiftpage.

Global scope and sales execution: Infor employs resources in 40 countries, and Infor CRM issold by 130 global partners. Gartner notes that, with the acquisition, Infor added a directsales team that will improve its sales execution in the long term.

CAUTIONS

New business and sales execution: Infor claims that it did not lose sales momentum duringthe acquisition; to date, however, it is not appearing on many buyer shortlists evaluated byGartner.

Cloud platform: In a market in which SaaS dominates most new business opportunities, 90%of Saleslogix's customers use the on-premises product, and most of the remainingcustomers use single-tenant SaaS. Infor plans to build a multitenant SaaS solution, but thestatus quo remains until that solution is completed.

CRM functionality: Some references give Infor comparatively low scores for core SFAcapabilities that will be important to B2B companies, including account, opportunity, lead,collaboration and content management functions.

Microsoft (Dynamics CRM)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the on-premises companion to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online,returns in the Leaders quadrant. Microsoft Dynamics on-premises offers a full set of SFAcapabilities for B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) processes. Organizations considerMicrosoft Dynamics CRM on-premises primarily to capitalize on existing investments in theon-premises Microsoft technology stack, such as SharePoint and SQL Server, and to maintaincontrol over data security considerations. Microsoft keeps the capabilities of Dynamics CRMon-premises on a par with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. However, the online versionmoved ahead of the on-premises version on this year's Magic Quadrant, because it garneredmuch stronger results in the Magic Quadrant survey than did the on-premises version.

STRENGTHS

Partner networks: Microsoft continues to maintain a large community of VARs and ISVs forselling, implementing and maintaining on-premises SFA implementations.

Microsoft platform: Dynamics CRM continues to be selected because of its interoperabilitywith Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, SharePoint and Lync. Business analysts can configureand IT departments can customize the system using the xRM platform, which leveragesMicrosoft Visual Studio and SQL Server.

Functionality: Microsoft added new capabilities during the past year, including guidedselling, mobile dashboards, product families, sales hierarchies and social listening.

CAUTIONS

User satisfaction compared with online version: Users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises express lower satisfaction with the system's account, opportunity, lead, quotes,forecasting and content management capabilities than did users of Microsoft DynamicsCRM Online.

Release timing and customer satisfaction with upgrades: Microsoft will only do annualreleases for the on-premises version, which amplifies the fact that the release date of on-premises functionality has commonly lagged behind the online release dates. Somereferences report low levels of satisfaction with the release upgrade process compared withDynamics CRM Online.

Upgrades from early releases: Customers that are on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 orearlier have some upgrade challenges in the areas of custom workflows, reports anddashboards.

Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online remains a Leader in this year's Magic Quadrant, on strengthof product capabilities, interoperability with Microsoft Office 365 and end-user satisfaction.Microsoft appears on many buyers' shortlists because it aggressively markets the product toIT organizations. Dynamics CRM Online has a wide scope of capabilities that are relevant to allsales organizations. Microsoft released its first iOS-supported product during 2014 and itsfirst Android mobile application during 2015. As is the case with the Dynamics on-premisesproduct, Microsoft relies on its partner network to sell, implement and customize the SaaSproduct.

STRENGTHS

Functionality: Microsoft offers predictive analytics for sales behavior analytics and trendanalysis. Surveyed users indicate improved satisfaction with ability to build custom reportsand dashboards, which addresses a gap that Gartner noted in last year's Magic Quadrant.

Pricing: At a list price of $65 per user per month, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online continuesto be priced very aggressively relative to the other leading SFA solutions.

Platform extensibility: References give Microsoft good marks for its ability to customize orconfigure the SFA system to meet business process needs.

CAUTIONS

Platform rationalization: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online integrates with various MicrosoftAzure services, but the product itself is built on a different platform, called xRM. This isbecause Microsoft Dynamics Online was launched in 2010, before Microsoft Azure wasintroduced. Third-party ISVs or internal developers in an information technology departmentwho want to build SaaS applications based on leveraging Microsoft cloud technology willbuild their applications on Azure, not xRM. Azure-built applications can integrate through aservices layer with Microsoft Dynamics CRM online. Microsoft has not publicly announcedspecific plans with dates to rationalize the overlapping platforms; specifically, movingDynamics CRM Online from xRM onto the Azure platform.

Integration with non-Microsoft systems: Users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online expresslower levels of satisfaction (compared with the survey results of other SFA vendors) interms of the ability to integrate the system to their back-end systems, including incentivecompensation, email marketing, and configure, price and quote (CPQ) systems.

Mobile capabilities: Surveyed users reported the lowest level of satisfaction with mobilecapabilities on smartphones, and a midtier level of satisfaction with the mobile experienceon tablets, when compared with the survey results of other SFA vendors.

NetSuite

NetSuite remains a Challenger in this year's Magic Quadrant. NetSuite continued to showstrong business growth during 2014, with a revenue increase from $415.5 million in fiscal2014 to $556.2 million in fiscal 2015. NetSuite's primary business is financial accounting andERP functionality. NetSuite's "sweet spot" for SFA continues to be for companies that wantcore SFA functionality, such as opportunity management and capabilities for billing, ordermanagement and incentive compensation. This is an attractive option for SMBs or divisions oflarger companies that want to minimize integration complexity caused by using multipleapplication offerings from different vendors. However, Gartner has still not seen NetSuite winsignificant business in which an IT leader supporting sales is looking for SFA only.

STRENGTHS

Lead-to-order process: NetSuite has the functional coverage to support the lead-to-orderprocess if an organization chooses to adopt NetSuite as a complete business applicationsuite.

Vendor viability: Overall, strong business performance and growth continue to improveNetSuite's long-term business viability.

Customer data visibility: Companies implementing NetSuite's entire suite provide goodvisibility into a customer's transactional history, such as e-commerce transactions, ordersand accounts receivable. This will enable customers to use NetSuite's reporting capability,equipping sales representatives with knowledge to enhance sales engagements with thecustomer.

CAUTIONS

Sales-only implementations: NetSuite has many of the pieces for an SFA system, and itssolution could certainly be implemented without having to implement its ERP offerings.However, NetSuite has not made the IT leader supporting sales its primary focus comparedwith other SFA vendors.

Large-scale sales deployments: Although NetSuite has a few customers that would beconsidered large from a business perspective (at least 1,000 salespeople), it has not shownthe ability to consistently implement large-scale global deployments for SFA. The vendor'suse for SFA in large companies tends to be focused on a division or geography.

CRM ISV ecosystem: Having a suite approach has its advantages, especially whenconsidering integration and working with a single provider. On the other hand, it has theeffect of not attracting best-of-breed sales application providers as partners. NetSuite doeshave a partner application marketplace, but it has limited CRM or drill-down niche salesapplications.

Oracle

Oracle Sales Cloud gains Oracle Visionaries status again in this year's Magic Quadrant. Oraclewill no longer sell Siebel Sales to new customers. This move has caused Oracle Siebel CRM todrop from the SFA Magic Quadrant and is a net positive for Oracle Sales Cloud. Gartner hasalso reviewed proposals in which Oracle Marketing Cloud, Oracle Sales Cloud and OracleService Cloud are combined into a single proposal. This is a notable step because it enables

Oracle Sales Cloud to complete in more global CRM deals, despite that the products are stillon separate architectures. The Oracle Sales Cloud provides basic configuration with theFusion platform and the Groovy scripting language, and complex design with direct access tothe Oracle Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). In Release 10, Oracle has added predictiveanalytics and a mobile app designer, and it has augmented its industry-specific solutions infinancial services, telecommunications, high technology, industrial manufacturing andconsumer goods.

STRENGTHS

Analytics and business intelligence (BI): Oracle Sales Cloud leverages Oracle BusinessIntelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) as its analytics engine, with no incremental charge tothe customer. This enables Oracle to produce dashboard reports from the current state ofdata, as well as conduct historical trend analyses beyond CRM data. Release 10 also addedpredictive analytics capabilities.

Price value: Oracle is aggressively priced, with most clients being able to get attractivediscounts and leverage promotional programs. Oracle is proactive in moving Siebel Salescustomers to Oracle Sales Cloud, often offering low-cost or free migration programs toentice customers to move to Oracle Sales Cloud rather than a competitor.

Integration with Oracle Marketing Cloud: In the reference survey, Oracle customersexpressed high satisfaction with the integration of Oracle Sales Cloud with email marketingsolutions from Oracle Marketing Cloud.

CAUTIONS

Sales execution needs to improve: Oracle is clearly more competitive now (appearing onmore shortlists) and has won more deals that were at least 1,000 users in 2014 than in2013. However, based on the size of Oracle's sales force, it needs to accelerate newbusiness. Furthermore, these new deals still have to become referenceable customers forOracle to prove that it has gained mind share with IT leadership and that it is able toencourage global Siebel Sales customers to move to Oracle Sales Cloud.

Ecosystem made progress but still needs improvement: Oracle has made progress inexpanding its ecosystem for implementation partners and ISVs (Oracle Cloud Marketplace).Oracle needs to improve mind share for both high-end external service providers (ESPs) andniche third-party ISVs. Gartner validates mind share by asking ESPs and ISVs to name theirtop priorities for partnerships.

Integration across multiple CRM cloud platforms: Oracle continues to improve directintegration across its acquired CRM products in its CX Cloud suite, but Oracle's strategy is tonot replatform the cloud applications it acquires onto the Oracle Public Cloud. This meanscurrently that acquired products are on different platforms, with different environments toconfigure or customize versus the Oracle Sales Cloud. Oracle states it is moving toward asingle administration and configuration tool to simplify administration and a unified userexperience for all of its CX Cloud products.

Sage

Sage is a Niche Player again in this year's Magic Quadrant, due to the company's limitedmarket visibility and sales execution. However, Sage CRM has strong SFA functionality forSMBs, an intuitive user interface and affordable pricing. Sage CRM's use of Visual Studio andC# enables customers to tap into a wide pool of Microsoft developers worldwide. In May2015, Sage revealed a new "strategic partnership" with Salesforce and a new mobile product,Sage Life. The product puts Sage's ERP processes onto the Salesforce1 Platform and isdesigned to improve interactions across colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers indigital channels.

STRENGTHS

Global presence: Sage is a large organization with offices in 23 countries and has aworldwide roster of 17,000 companies.

ERP integration: Sage's strongest value proposition is the prebuilt integrations betweenSage CRM and the vendor's ERP products.

Economical solution: Due to its lower price point, Sage's offering is a good economicalsolution for SMBs seeking an alternative to better-known SFA vendors.

CAUTIONS

Sales execution: Sage needs to improve its sales execution for new business. This analysisis based on published 2014 Gartner CRM market share, as well as Gartner continuing toreceive few inquiries that include Sage CRM on shortlists.

Salesforce partnership: Sage Life, which is a new Sage accounting product aimed primarilyat new customers, will be built native on Salesforce's Force.com and sold by Sage to newcustomers. Gartner believes the partnership will benefit both Salesforce and Sage from acorporate perspective, but it will have an adverse impact on Sage CRM sales opportunitiesfor customers that purchase Sage Life. Sage will still lead with Sage CRM for its more than adozen current Sage accounting and ERP solutions.

Functionality: Some references report comparatively low satisfaction with Sage's mobileand content management capabilities. Social collaboration is available only via integrationwith Yammer. In Sage CRM 7.3, released in January 2015, Sage included additional mobilefeatures (such as an improved UI for our connected mobile solutions), additional features tothe Sage CRM in-market iPhone app (including customization capabilities), and a newAndroid app.

Salesforce

Salesforce's Sales Cloud makes it a Leader again in this year's Magic Quadrant. During thepast year, Salesforce has released Salesforce Wave — a SaaS-only BI visualization tool foranalyzing unstructured and semistructured data that resides both inside and outside ofSalesforce. Salesforce has also improved the Sales Cloud for mobile, introducing new sales-specific mobile applications. Salesforce has improved system reliability, notably by reducingthe number and severity of brownouts and outages that occurred in previous years.

Competitors have continued to close the gap on Salesforce's leadership in Sales Cloudfunctionality. For example, Salesforce has not yet released a native predictive analyticssolution for lead or opportunity scoring.

STRENGTHS

Salesforce1 Platform and Salesforce1 Mobile App: Salesforce has improved the Salesforce1Platform, adding an application designing capability (named "Lightning") that is useful forbuilding HTML5 apps that will run on any mobile device. Salesforce improved the nativemobile capabilities, adding apps that make it easier for users to interact with their salesdata. For example, the Today app makes it easier for users to look up records, and monitorand update sales activities.

Vision for Sales Cloud: In response to acknowledged gaps in relevance to sales users'needs, Salesforce's recent and planned releases (Wave, Salesforce1 Mobile and Work.com)focus on sales effectiveness and data-driven insights.

Sales process functionality and usability: References express strong satisfaction withaccount, lead, opportunity, product, collaboration and pipeline management capabilities.

CAUTIONS

User interface: Despite improvements to the mobile experience via Salesforce1, theSalesforce browser-based Aloha interface is more than seven years old and still follows thetab/object/record design paradigm that has existed since the first version. Salesforce plansto release a new UI in late 2015. This means that clients that heavily customized the UI tomatch the process-oriented way that sales users work, must evaluate how the new UIchanges their processes.

Outlook integration: Salesforce has been investing heavily in Outlook and Office integration.Salesforce released a beta version of Salesforce App for Outlook, designed for customers ofMicrosoft Outlook 2013 and Office 365. Salesforce for Outlook, the company's Outlookintegration application for previous versions of Outlook and Office, will continue to besupported. References cite some levels of dissatisfaction with email and calendarintegration with older Outlook version 1 plug-ins.

Premium price: Salesforce's Sales Cloud is the highest-priced cloud SFA service. With listprices of $300 per user per month for Performance Edition (which provides more than SFA),$250 per user per month for Unlimited Edition and $125 for Enterprise Edition, these areconsidered the highest-priced services in the market. Customers find value in these editions,but significant discounts are granted in highly competitive situations and volume deals.

SAP (Cloud for Sales)

SAP Cloud for Sales not only retains its place in the Visionaries quadrant in 2015, but alsoimproves on its position due to improvements in SAP's mobile applications and salesexecution. SAP has continued to gain validation of its Cloud for Sales SaaS offering in themarket through an increase in new customers during the past 12 months. SAP now has manycustomers with more than 1,000 users, and Gartner estimates that approximately 200,000users are under contract. SAP's salespeople are leading with the SAP Cloud for Sales SaaS

offering for new business and are going back to their installed on-premises customers tomove to the SaaS offering. SAP Cloud for Sales mobile now supports offline functionality andalso integrates with SAP Hana PaaS customizations. As part of its core strategy, SAPcontinues to invest in cloud industry verticals and supports specialized capabilities across 16industries, including consumer products, retail, high tech, insurance, utilities, professionalservices and automotive.

STRENGTHS

Integration with other SAP applications: SAP Cloud for Sales integrates with SAP products,including SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), SAP Business Warehouse (BW), SAPBusinessObjects and SAP CRM on-premises offering, as well as third-party solutionsthrough Hana Cloud Integration (HCI) services, an integration PaaS (iPaaS) offering.

Usability and offline mobility: SAP has improved its user interface by leveraging Fioriresponsive design principles for salespeople and sales managers for Web browsers andmultiple mobile devices. It is also one of the few vendors that supports offline mobile data.

Leverage of Hana Cloud Platform (HCP): SAP's porting of the SAP Cloud for Sales onto theHCP now provides customers with multilevel data security, as well as services that can beused to configure, extend and integrate the SAP Cloud for Customer in global deployments.

CAUTIONS

User experience customizations beyond configurability require IT resources: Complexcustomizations beyond configuration need software development kit (SDK) skills: SAPCloud for Sales has improved its configuration capabilities, enabling administrators toconfigure UI screens and business workflow rules compared with its SAP CRM on-premisesoffering. Configuration changes are automatically applied to mobile apps across all devices.However, customizations, such as coding custom business logic, requires IT resources withSDK skills.

Limited ISV ecosystem: SAP has yet to establish an extensive ISV ecosystem of niche salesproviders to fill in potential white spaces in its portfolio. This means that, when comparedwith other SFA vendors, clients of SAP do not have the same ability to rapidly deploy newSaaS applications into Cloud for Sales.

Large customer live implementations: SAP has sold to multiple large customers (more than2,000 users). Most of them are in the initial stages of implementation. Large customersconsidering SAP Cloud for Sales should therefore seek references that match their scaleand scope.

SAP (CRM)

SAP CRM is again in the Challengers quadrant, on the strength of its sales execution withinthe SAP installed base. SAP CRM is not rated as highly on the Completeness of Vision axis asSAP Cloud for Sales, because SAP is increasingly focusing its go-to-market efforts on SAPCloud for Sales. Although SAP Cloud for Sales integrates with SAP ERP, the on-premisesproduct will continue to be the choice of many customers requiring real-time integration — toavoid potential latency issues that are sometimes associated with any cloud-based service.

Gartner does not expect SAP to abandon the SAP CRM on-premises offering anytime soon,especially because there is a significant installed base for the product. It is also important toemphasize that the SAP CRM on-premises solution is a different product from SAP Cloud forSales.

STRENGTHS

Broad footprint: The SFA footprint of SAP CRM offers a wide range of CRM functionality,including sales opportunity management; order management; configure, price and quote;and sales performance management.

Integration with SAP applications: SAP CRM integrates with SAP ECC, SAP BW, SAPBusinessObjects and other SAP CRM functionality, such as marketing and customer service.

SAP implementation leverage: Customers that have dedicated SAP project teams canleverage these resources for SAP CRM Sales, assuming they are not fully loaded with otherSAP projects.

CAUTIONS

Future focus will be SAP Cloud for Sales: SAP Cloud for Sales is clearly more of a strategicfocus for SAP going forward. The vendor needs to ensure that SAP Cloud for Customer is asuccess to reinforce its long-term viability in the CRM market. This means that SAP willprioritize development and go-to-market efforts toward SAP Cloud for Sales. SAP willcontinue to invest in SAP CRM in the near term, adding Fiori and Hana advanced predictiveanalytics.

Enterprise application complexity: Managing the cost and complexity of enterpriseapplications and the dependencies of other SAP middleware is a challenge. SAP offers rapiddeployment solutions (RDS) to reduce implementation time.

Ceasing support for legacy SAP Mobile Sales Manager (formerly a Sybase product): Gartnerhas learned through client inquiries that SAP will not support its legacy SAP CRM Mobileproduct. This means customers will have to either build their own mobile application or buythe new mobile sales product that is only available through adding subscriptions for SAPCloud for Sales.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM remains a Visionary in the SFA Magic Quadrant, on the strength of its productusability, strategic vision and platform flexibility. The company has continued to demonstrateit is a viable alternative in highly competitive shortlists against larger vendor alternatives.SugarCRM has enhanced its ecosystem marketplace by adding ISV partners and enablingbetter ways for customers to navigate potential solutions. SugarCRM still offers multipledelivery models (SaaS, on-premises and hosted), and its solution is based on an open-sourcetechnology stack.

STRENGTHS

User interface: SugarCRM revamped its user experience as part of its Sugar 7 release, andcustomers have responded favorably. Even those customers that did not select SugarCRMstill felt the user interface was compelling.

Price value: SugarCRM is competitively priced in customer deal situations, often coming inlower than most leading competitors. The vendor offers competitive functionality with agood back-end environment for configuring and extending the core SFA application.

Customer responsiveness/professional services: This vendor's customers often use theprimary reseller as their first-line support; however, the conclusion of most customers is thatSugarCRM is responsive to resolving issues in a reasonable time frame. During thereference checks, SugarCRM also gained high scores for its professional servicesorganization.

CAUTIONS

Lack of large enterprise wins: SugarCRM continues to make more shortlists for largeenterprises, but it needs to win more to demonstrate its viability for large-enterprisebusiness. Most of SugarCRM's growth has come from initial customer wins in the range of500 to 1,000 users, or fewer. SugarCRM does have at least two active implementations ofmore than 15,000 users.

Proof points from global ESP partnerships: SugarCRM has a strong implementationnetwork, with boutique or geographically based ESPs. SugarCRM has a good relationshipwith IBM Global Business Services, and it has added T-Systems, Infosys and Wipro (during2014) to support global implementations. More proof points are needed by these partnersimplementing customers of SugarCRM to demonstrate large global rollouts.

Reference ratings related to upgrades: Compared with other vendors in the reference survey,SugarCRM scored lower for satisfaction with the version upgrade process. Gartner notesthat SugarCRM did provide a mix of on-premises, mixed and SaaS references. In manycases, on-premises customers that have chosen to skip releases could have contributed tothis lower rating.

Tour de Force

Tour de Force remains in the Niche Players quadrant again this year. It is a 14-year-oldcompany that targets manufacturing-distribution-based companies and has good knowledgeof the business needs of companies in this space. Tour de Force focuses on wholesaledistributors, as well as small to midsize manufacturing companies that distribute productsthrough wholesale distributors. Tour de Force provides an on-premises software product, andit does not yet offer a dedicated mobile application for SFA functions.

STRENGTHS

SFA capabilities: Respondents in the Magic Quadrant survey noted comparatively high levelsof satisfaction with Tour de Force's opportunity management, account management andcollaboration capabilities. References also give Tour de Force high marks for ease ofintegration with external systems.

ERP integration: Tour de Force has built a CRM framework for integrating with ERP systems,including midmarket ERP systems not typically targeted by the larger CRM sales vendors.Due to its manufacturing distribution focus, Tour de Force integrates ERP data beyondcustomer master data in areas such as pricing, order transactions and accounting.

Delivery and support: Although a small company, Tour de Force has a very dedicatedinstalled base, with some customers of more than 14 years' standing.

CAUTIONS

Revenue growth: Gartner estimates Tour de Force's CRM solution produces less than $10million in revenue. A vendor that has been in business for 14 years should have reached ahigher growth rate than Tour de Force currently exhibits. It needs to scale its selling anddelivery channels to move to the next level. To this end, Tour de Force had no equity fundinguntil May 2014; since that time, Tour de Force claims it has begun to see its growth ratesincrease due to investment in its selling organization.

Limited partner ecosystem: Implementations are delivered by Tour de Force, rather than byESPs. While these internal resources are likely to understand manufacturing distributionrequirements, if the vendor hits a growth spurt, the availability of resources could becomean issue. Tour de Force started an implementation partner program in February 2015.

Mobility and SaaS: Tour de Force is in the process of providing an application-responsiveuser interface through HTML5, and it states it will have a SaaS offering during the next twoyears. Non-HTML5 browser-only approaches do not optimize the native experience for amobile device, and nonsupport for SaaS will hinder Tour de Force in some customersituations.

Zoho

Zoho is once more a Niche Player in the SFA Magic Quadrant, improving its position from lastyear due to the strength of its customer satisfaction results. Zoho is a SaaS-only SFA offering,appropriate for SMBs with eight to 20 sales users and companies with limited budgets.Gartner estimates that Zoho grew to about $63 million in revenue in 2014, with about $39.7million of that in CRM revenue. Zoho provides core opportunity and pipeline management, andbaseline functionality for price books, quotes, vendor management, sales orders, purchaseorders and invoices. Respondents in the Magic Quadrant survey registered comparatively highlevels of satisfaction with Zoho's quote and order processes, as well as its lead and accountmanagement.

STRENGTHS

Low subscription costs: Zoho's "freemium" low-cost paid pricing model is attractive forcompanies with limited budgets and provides a cost-competitive alternative for CRM sales.

Functionality: References rate Zoho well for core account, opportunity and reportingfunctionality, particularly for forecasting by territories.

Global installed base: Zoho has a relatively large installed base of more than 300,000 endusers (inclusive of free and paid users) and supports 15 languages. Zoho hasimplementation relationships with global SIs, including Fuji Xerox in China and Tata

Communications in India.

CAUTIONS

Business model: While Zoho's freemium pricing model is attractive for small companies, italso limits the vendor's ability to actively sell its product or develop its partner channels tolarge enterprises. Zoho relies mostly on inbound selling, and its small sales and channelteams limit its ability to expand in the market. The largest Zoho implementation is about500 users.

Implementation delivery and support: Zoho has limited service and support capabilitiescompared with other SFA vendors. Zoho does not offer professional services forimplementation. Zoho offers no-cost support, including email-based technical support,during the initial implementation period for freemium users. All paid customers get 24/5telephone support. Zoho states it has 1,000 channels partners that do implementation, localsupport and services.

Limited sales process complexity: Most references in the Magic Quadrant noted that theyuse Zoho solely for account, contact, opportunity and sales activity management. Zoho isnot rated highly for its ability to meet complex sales process requirements.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes asmarkets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrantor MarketScope may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant orMarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changedour opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore,changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added

Base

Bullhorn

Dropped

Oracle Siebel CRM has been dropped from the 2015 SFA Magic Quadrant because Oracle isnot selling it to new "greenfield" customers. Oracle will continue to sell more Siebel Salesseats to customers that have already deployed Siebel Sales.

Inclusion and Exclusion CriteriaTo be included in this Magic Quadrant, a vendor must demonstrate that it has:

Shown proven ability to deliver account, contact, opportunity and activity management, aswell as pipeline reporting and forecasting in three industries.

Made multiple releases with significant functional improvements during the past 18 months;a new or acquired offering from an established vendor in this market will also be consideredif it can be validated with customers.

At least five new, named customers that have actively deployed SFA functionality during thepast 12 months.

Demonstrated corporate business viability through business performance, new customeradoption and strategic partnerships over multiple years.

Evaluation Criteria

Ability to Execute

SFA applications include capabilities for opportunity management, including contactmanagement, account management, and sales pipeline and forecasting; sales-effectivenessapplications, including guided selling, sales configuration, quotation management and contentmanagement; and territory management. SFA applications increasingly include native socialcollaboration capabilities or integrate with commercial social collaboration systems.

Different sales organizations require different levels of depth and complexity of capabilities.Vendors that support a wide range of complexity have greater market potential and are ratedaccordingly. This is a cross-industry Magic Quadrant; therefore, the evaluation of a provider'soffering is focused on the ability to serve several distinct industry sectors, not to provideindustry-specific solutions.

In many cases, an SFA application will combine several functional components, some ofwhich require third-party vendors. A key evaluation criterion is how well the SFA vendor'sapplication integrates with third-party products and customer data sources. This is measuredprimarily by the number and complexity of data and application integrations, as demonstratedby live customer deployments. Vendors that have fostered an ecosystem of value-addedapplication suppliers and partners will rate well for this subcategory.

Extra weight will also be applied to vendor support for tablets and smartphones. This includesthe ability to provide access to relevant SFA functionality leveraging targeted device value-added benefits.

Product or Service: The overall vendor product/service functionality rating is developed byevaluating specific SFA functionality, mobile access and architecture (for example, openness,flexibility, usability and workflow), and sales reporting and analytics.

Opportunity management capabilities are weighted more heavily than other SFA applicationbuilding blocks. This reflects market demand for SFA functionality by sales organizations. Thevendor must have a stable product development team for each product module it sells.Increased emphasis will also be placed on the value that SFA applications provide directly tosalespeople.

Overall Viability: Key aspects of this criterion are the vendor's ability to ensure continuedvitality of a product, including support of current and future releases, as well as a clearroadmap for the next three years. The vendor must have the cash on hand and consistentrevenue growth during four quarters to fund employee burn rates and to generate profits. Thevendor is also rated on its commitment and ability to generate revenue and profits specificallyin the SFA market.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor must provide global sales and distribution coverage thataligns with its marketing messages. The provider must have specific experience and successselling SFA applications to sales buying centers (i.e., the VP of sales or sales operations).

Market Responsiveness and Track Record: We evaluate the vendor's ability to respond,change direction and be flexible to evolving customer needs and market dynamics. Thiscriterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: This refers to the clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programsdesigned to deliver the vendor's message to influence the market, promote its brand andbusiness, increase awareness of its products, and establish a positive identification of theproduct, brand or vendor with buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination ofpublicity, promotions, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Feedback from active customers on generally available releases duringthe past 12 to 18 months is an important consideration. Sources of feedback include vendor-supplied references, Gartner client inquiries and other customer-facing interactions, such asGartner conferences. Customers' experiences are evaluated based on the vendor's ability tohelp customers achieve positive business value, as well as sustained user adoption, qualityimplementation and ongoing support.

Operations: This criterion evaluates the vendor's ability to meet its goals and commitments.Factors include the quality of the organizational structure — skills, experience, programs,systems and other vehicles that enable the provider to operate effectively and efficiently on anongoing basis. For SaaS offerings, operations also will include the vendor's ability to manageoperational infrastructure requirements to meet client demand.

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record High

Marketing Execution Low

Customer Experience High

Operations Medium

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Completeness of Vision

Marketing Understanding: The vendor has shown the ability to understand the businessissues facing the vice president of sales, and has shown the ability to demonstrate andexplain how SFA applications can be applied to improve the overall sales effectiveness andperformance of a prospect's sales organization.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated marketing strategy has a set of messages thatappeals to selling organizations and is consistently communicated throughout theorganization, and externalized through the website, customer programs and positioningstatements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling SFA software uses the appropriate network of directand indirect sales, marketing, service, and communications affiliates that extend the scopeand depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.Key elements of the strategy include a sales and distribution plan, internal investment priorityand timing, and partner alliances.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor should demonstrate a vision for new applicationfunctionality across the breadth and depth of product capabilities; this is critical for meetingthe needs of a maturing market. Subcriteria include the vendor's vision for opportunitymanagement; sales effectiveness capabilities, such as guided selling, sales configuration,quote management and content management; territory management; access and architecture(such as openness, flexibility, extensibility and usability); and sales reporting and analytics.The product strategy can be a combination of organic development, acquisitions and/orecosystems. However, for ecosystems, close attention is paid to the quality and support ofthird-party partners.

Business Model: Vendors need to have clear business plans for how they will be successful inthe SFA market. These business plans should include appropriate levels of investment toachieve profitability and healthy revenue growth during a three- to five-year period. Saleschannel and partnership strategies are important components.

Innovation: Vendors must show a marshaling of resources, expertise or capital forcompetitive advantage or investments in new areas, such as social collaboration, cloudcomputing and SaaS; or new devices, such as the tablets and smartphones; or newtechnology directions, such as the Gartner Nexus of Forces.

Geographic Strategy: We examine the vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills andofferings to meet the specific needs of regions outside the corporate headquarters' location,directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography andmarket.

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding Medium

Market Understanding Medium

Marketing Strategy Low

Sales Strategy Low

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy Not Rated

Innovation High

Geographic Strategy Medium

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders

Leaders have the ability to execute against their vision through products, services anddemonstrated, solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders havesignificant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and the Asia/Pacificregion in a wide variety of vertical industries, with multiple proof points above 500 users.Leaders are often the ones against which other providers in the market measure themselves.

Challengers

The vendors in the Challengers quadrant are often larger than most (but not all) vendors in theNiche Players quadrant, and demonstrate a higher volume of new business for SFA. Thesevendors have the size to compete worldwide; however, in some cases, they may not be able toexecute equally well in all geographies. They understand the evolving needs of a salesorganization, yet may not lead customers into new functional areas with their strongfunctional vision. Challengers tend to have a good technology vision for architecture and otherIT organizational considerations, but have not won over the top sales executives.

Visionaries

Visionaries are ahead of most potential competitors in delivering innovative products and/ordelivery models. They anticipate emerging/changing sales needs, and move the market aheadinto areas where it hasn't yet been. They have a strong potential to influence the direction ofthe SFA market, but are limited in execution and/or demonstrated track record.

Niche Players

Niche Players offer products for SFA functionality, but may lack some functional components,may not show the ability to consistently handle deployments of more than 500 users acrossmultiple geographies or may lack strong business execution in the SFA market. These vendorsmay offer complete portfolios for a specific vertical, but face challenges in one or moreimportant areas to support cross-industry requirements, such as complex forecasting or saleseffectiveness. They may have an inconsistent implementation track record, or may lack theability to support large-enterprise requirements. Despite the issues described, in many cases,Niche Players can offer the best solutions to meet the needs of particular sales organizations,considering the price/value ratio for the solution.

ContextAll vendors included in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for SFA have customers that are successfullyusing their products and services; however, this is not an exhaustive list. Some regional and/orvertical industry SFA specialists did not meet our inclusion criteria. This Magic Quadrantencompasses a wide cross section of vendors, including those that offer different deliverymodels (such as on-premises, hosted and SaaS), and differing levels of functional breadth andsophistication. Regardless of the provider you're considering, ask: "Will this vendor help mysales organization sell more effectively?" In many cases, a sales organization must evaluatenot just a vendor's suite of product offerings, but also the ecosystem of providers that can fillin functional white space for capabilities the considered vendor in the Magic Quadrant maynot offer.

Use this Magic Quadrant as a reference for evaluations, but explore the market further toqualify the capacity of each vendor to address your unique business problems and technicalconcerns. Depending on the complexity and scale of your requirements, your shortlist will beunique. The Magic Quadrant for SFA is not designed to be the sole tool for creating a vendorshortlist. Use it as part of your due diligence, and in conjunction with discussions with Gartneranalysts.

Magic Quadrants are snapshots in time. To be fair and complete in the analysis, we need tostop data collection efforts at a consistent time. For this research, the cutoff date was June2015.

This Magic Quadrant applies primarily to B2B sales organizations that need to manage directand indirect sales activities. It was not produced with an eye for B2B-to-consumer (B2B2C)sales, commonly seen in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and pharmaceutical industries.For more information on SFA systems for these industries, see "Market Guide for RetailExecution and Monitoring Solutions for the Consumer Goods Industry" and "Market Guide forCRM in Pharma and Biotech."

Market OverviewSFA deployments continue to focus on core functional capabilities for accounts, contacts,opportunities, selling processes and sales operations. SFA requirements are unique for eachB2B sales organization, based on the maturity and culture of the organization in its use of

technology, sophistication of sales practices and anticipated ROI. Gartner sees an increasedfocus on sales performance management capabilities that augment core SFA initiatives.

Just as each sales organization is different, not all SFA systems are created equal.Furthermore, factors such as selling style, organizational size, sales processes, integrationdemands, diversity of roles, number of users and organizational structures are unique to eachcompany.

SFA has distinct implications for each company:

Product-driven transactional sales organizations will find value in basic lead and opportunitymanagement capabilities to reduce sales cycles and improve sales management visibility.

Large, complex sales organizations that support multitier, matrixed sales teams require role-specific functionality for inside field and strategic account salespeople, as well as scalabilityand performance attributes to manage large volumes of data. Many vendors in the NichePlayers quadrant have better price/value alternatives for less-complex uses.

Consultative solution selling will require rich-content process support to tie togetherproposals, bids, configurations and quotes with authorizations and order-capture systems.

A successful vendor selection strategy will assess providers that support data requirements,access modes and functionality for each sales role. The sales processes will dictate thefunctional components that best satisfy organizational and individual sales requirements.

Implementation methods vary, ranging from self-implementation to global SI-led efforts forcomprehensive global, multibusiness unit implementations. Companies that have low tomoderate sales process complexity and that do not need to integrate to back-end systemscan self-implement some of the systems reviewed here. Companies with complex processesthat span multiple departments and that require data integration commonly employ third-partySIs. In cases with exceptional process complexity, it is common to hire the vendor'sprofessional services group for the implementation. As a general rule of thumb, regardless ofyour sales process complexity, Gartner recommends that you employ an SI if you are new tothe vendor's technology.

As part of the Magic Quadrant analysis process, Gartner collected input from more than 160companies that are using the SFA solutions reviewed here. Among the data that Gartnercollected:

The top three reasons for selecting the SFA solution: functionality (59% of respondents),followed by integration with enterprise systems (55%) and usability (49%).

The mean implementation age (total time that the system has been live) is 4.00 years.

The mean deployment time, measured from the date of contract signing to the date of thePhase 1 deployment, is 6.44 months.

Fifty-nine percent of buyers are "very satisfied" or "completely satisfied" with vendors' buyingand procurement processes.

For more insights from the Magic Quadrant survey, please contact Gartner.

SaaS continues to accelerate as the predominant delivery model for SFA. Gartner has spokenwith many clients that are replacing their on-premises systems with SaaS-based SFA systems.Mobile SFA functions, used on both smartphones and tablets, are fast becoming the data-entry method of choice among Gartner clients. By 2017, Gartner predicts that 65% of salesorganizations will use smartphones to drive user adoption and improve data quality for SFAsystems. Gartner's recent survey of SFA references indicates that 68% of companies usetablets for both account management and sales activity tracking, and 58% of companies usetablets for opportunity management.

Gartner also favorably notes that SFA vendors are increasingly creating industry-specificsolutions, but it is too soon to assess the results and benefits realized by software buyers.Because this trend appears to be accelerating, and because Gartner believes that SFAsolutions must return rapid time to value, Gartner will give this topic more attention in the nextyear.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute

Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. Thisincludes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whetheroffered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definitionand detailed in the subcriteria.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health,the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individualbusiness unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and willadvance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structurethat supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presalessupport, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achievecompetitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve andmarket dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed todeliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business,increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with theproduct/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by acombination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and salesactivities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients tobe successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customersreceive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer

support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-levelagreements and so on.

Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factorsinclude the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs,systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficientlyon an ongoing basis.

Completeness of Vision

Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and totranslate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of visionlisten to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with theiradded vision.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicatedthroughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customerprograms and positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of directand indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope anddepth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery thatemphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to currentand future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings tomeet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise orcapital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meetthe specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly orthrough partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

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