I’m often skeptical of the multi-billion-dollar market predictions made by analyst firms. But social customer relationship management (CRM) is definitely an emerging portion of the enterprise 2.0 space, and it’s helpful to see what kind of growth it may generate.

Gartner, for one, just issued a prediction that the CRM market will enter a “three-year shake up” in 2011, as a number of key trends take hold. Sales, marketing and customer service technologies, projects and implementations will all see rapid changes over the next
few years, the consultancy predicts. As Gartner analyst Ed Thompson puts it:

“Over the next three years, social CRM will continue its exponential rise, software as a service (SaaS) will become routine, salesforce.com will reshuffle the market order, and consultants and system integrators will sell their own CRM software.”

By 2015, one-third of spending on new CRM software will be SaaS, Gartner predicts. In 2009, 24 percent of the CRM software market was delivered by SaaS, and this rose to more than 26 percent in 2010, up from virtually zero in 1999.

Gartner also says by 2013, spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide. This compares with Gartner’s forecast of more than $12 billion for overall spending on CRM software in 2012, means that social CRM will encompass approximately eight percent of all CRM spending in 2012, up from approximately four percent in 2010.

Gartner issued recommendations for companies interested in social CRM solutions:

• “Determine if there are any social CRM projects already under way; look in the marketing or customer service departments first.”
• “Calculate the likelihood that you will be forced to start something in 2011 ? your industry and culture are the best indicators.”
• “Find case studies specific to your industry that can provide examples of what is possible, and share them with other decision makers in your organization.”
• Don’t try to bypass the IT organization in moving to social CRM solutions, Gartner advises. “Instead, involve IT in purchase decisions early on to avoid the most-frequently cited downstream issue of data integration, and to address potential concerns about inadequate security, scalability and privacy.