Contrary to some research showing marketing budget skepticism around the world, a majority of senior marketers around the world surveyed by The CMO Council [download page] say their budgets have grown this year as compared to last. Along with these additional funds have come increased responsibilities, legitimacy, and compensation, leading The CMO Council to tab 2013 as “the year of the marketer.”

Key take-aways from the latest CRM forecasts and market estimates are provided below:

-According to Gartner, Salesforce.com’s worldwide CRM market share was 16.7% in 2011, second only to SAP. Gartner is predicting Salesforce.com will be the leading CRM vendor worldwide by 2013.

-SAP continues to be the worldwide leader in CRM software sales, with Salesforce.com ascending to second place according to the latest available data.

-The role of CMOs relative to CIOs are changing with respect to who is responsible for defining the needs of an enterprise in the areas of CRM, pricing and channel management strategies.

-The much-hyped area of social CRM will attain $1B in worldwide sales by the end of 2012, achieving 8% of all CRM spending this year, as Gartner has predicted often this year.

-Gartner, Forrester and IDC have predicted that cloud adoption rates by CRM subcategory will vary through 2016. All agree Sales applications will see the majority of net new sales on the SaaS platform.

-30% of sales organizations will issue iPads and tablets as the primary device standard issue for salespeople by 2014.

-Gartner predicts that by 2014, public social media networks will be in use by 80% of sales professionals with only 2% adoption rate of social CRM applications in the same time period 

-Marketing automation will lead CRM application segment growth with a 10.7% compound annual growth (CAGR) through 2016, reaching a total market value of $4.6B. Sales will continue to be the majority of CRM software revenue reaching $7.9B in 2016.

-Throughout 2013, Microsoft will quickly integrate Yammer throughout the entire Office Suite and demonstrate the value of using social graph databases to increase collaboration.

-CRM projects lead by consultants and system integrators (SIs) were completed the majority of time for Oracle installations (26%) down from 35% in 2009. Salesforce.com has continued to rise in this area, with 16% of all projects completed in 2012, up from 10% during 2009. The most common projects were customer service and support at 82%; sales, 74%; customer data, 73%; and marketing, 44%.

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