Even though EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) has the reputation of lagging behind when it comes to CRM adoption, the latest Aberdeen study found that CRM Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption rates in EMEA are equal to those in North America (NA). In this January 2008 study, Aberdeen interviewed 298 companies on their CRM delivery models: 190 in NA, 58 in EMEA.

Like in NA, companies in EMEA need to integrate fragmented customer data and provide CRM to a mobile, worldwide workforce. However, companies in EMEA are nearly twice as likely to adopt new CRM products, services and pricing than their NA counterparts, the study reports.

Companies from all areas focus on front-end process integration, enabling them to share customer knowledge and data from stand-alone systems. Their other planned process improvements are: ‘to customize CRM to align with existing sales processes’ and ‘to integrate silo-ed data for a more complete customer view’.

“By customizing CRM to mirror existing integrated front-end processes, companies achieve a more customer-centric culture which increases performance in key metrics such as average customer value and customer retention” states the study.

90% of EMEA companies said they would consider CRM SAAS, as did 95% of NA firms. NA firms however have had a longer exposure to CRM SAAS implementation: 17% of EMEA companies have used it for more than 2 years, vs. 28% of NA companies. In addition, about 10% of companies worldwide are considering implementation of CRM SaaS in 2008.

For the full report, click here:
CRM SAAS study by Aberdeen 2008

By Vera Lang