There may be a recession on at the moment but that doesn't seem to have affected the growth
of CRM technology according to a recent study released by Gartner. Total revenue last year saw a 12.5% climb from $8.13 billion dollars in 2007 to $9.15 billion in 2009. So why the staggering growth in the midst of a recession? Gartner researcher Sharon Mertz attributes the growth to three factors.

1: Customer Retention: Established enterprises are looking at ways they can use technology to hold onto their existing customers. With the addition of analytic software to many CRM platforms, companies have the ability to use this newfound insight into their existing customers as a means to turn one off buyers into brand-loyal repeat customers.

2: Lower per-seat costs: Software as a Service or SAAS changed the entry requirements for these systems. As opposed to traditional software licensing, the SAAS pricing model usually works per user per month or year. Since the software predominantly runs on external servers there are no initial setup costs and no hidden maintenance costs. The pricing model is in this way extremely transparent and attractive to both new and established enterprises.

3: Innovative Software: With the escalation of social networking and social software, came an awareness of the need to harness sales, marketing and customer services with respect to increased user participation in online forums and blogs.

Ed Thompson, Gartner analyst and vice president, said earlier this year that "CRM remains a major focus for business executives, because the goals of acquiring, developing and retaining customers in a profitable manner are timeless." Gartners Executive Programs survey confirmed this with a survey of over 1,500 CIOs worldwide that showed that CRM remained a chief concern, with European CIOs ranking it their 5th largest business priority.

The trend trajectory has seen the majority of organisations who viewed CRM as unlikely to deliver business benefits in 2000 are now shown to see it's success as inevitable. Mr Thompson added that "A decade’s experience means that CRM projects have become less risky and more predictable..." We have also seen a dramatic change in the pricing structure of CRM applications, whereby organisations paying $3000 per user per year in 2000 are now paying $1000 to $1500 in 2009.

While the most common pricing still revolves around a price per user model, the process-based model is set to overtake it. Fuelled by growth in service-oriented architecture (SOA) and SAAS, it is set to become the norm by 2020, up from less than 1% in 2009.

This delivery method is set to swell by approximately 50% of all field sales applications by 2012 but the percentage of CRM applications delivered in this way will still be only 25% of the market with a prediction of 40% by 2020. As compettition in the field of SAAS CRM intensifies, we will see the pricing structure drop from $800 per user per year in 2009 to near $500 in 2020.