We are back from our recent summer hiatus, with the latest round-up of CRM articles from around the Net. We have quite a varied line-up of CRM articles for you: this past week’s articles discuss the recent CRM market, how to buy CRM software for the banking and financial services industry, the future of Salesforce.com as the Microsoft of on-demand software, and a round-up of contact management systems for Macs.

A Rebound for CRM Software

From eMarketer:

After a slump, the CRM software market stabilized in 2003 and began to turn around in 2004.

“By some estimates, the potential market is still quite substantial,” says Steve Butler, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the CRM Software: Spending and Trends report. “That’s illustrated by Siebel Systems’ bold prediction that worldwide spending on customer-facing technology solutions over the next 10 years will be nearly five times larger than the total for the preceding quarter century.”

Read article here.

Six Steps for Successfully Buying CRM Software

From CIO Today:

CRM, at its best, organizes the different areas within a bank, including information from branches, to create a unified memory of a customer and instructions on how to treat that customer. Many banks are finding that CRM softwareRelevant Products/Services from TechExcel is becoming a must-have marketing tool.

Read article here.

Can Salesforce.com Grow Beyond Its CRM Niche?

From eWeek:

The Salesforce.com CRM (customer relationship management) platform, including the Supportforce customer service applications, the Customforce application customization tools and the Multiforce on-demand operating system, will allow the company to become a market-dominating aggregator of complementary hosted applications—its own and those of its partners.

Read article here.

Contact Management Software

From Macsimum News, an excellent two part article featuring a round-up of contact management software systems for the Mac. Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.