CXM Software Providers Meeting Growing Need to Manage Customer Activity Across the Enterprise

By 2028, companies will replace many customer experience (CX) point solutions with broad, cross-functional suites to manage CX at the enterprise level, new research from leading global technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III) finds.

“Enterprises are realizing they need platforms that manage processes across the customer’s lifecycle,” says Keith Dawson, director of Customer Experience Research, ISG Software Research. “We are seeing the emergence of tools that integrate the communications components of customer needs with analytic assessments of customer value, loyalty and intent. This is a significant and accelerating change in the marketplace.”

The ISG Buyers Guide for Customer Experience Management (CXM) defines CXM as a suite of applications built on a common platform that facilitates an interdepartmental view of customer activity and provides mechanisms for managing that activity. Some elements of that activity come from the contact center while others are derived from marketing technology. The report finds the precise mix of applications in a software provider’s suite depends on the legacy expertise of that particular software provider.

CXM has evolved to address the shortcomings of the decades-old Customer Resource Management (CRM) software category and its more departmental and application-centric approach, the report says. In contrast, CXM is based on the customer journey and the customer’s interactions with the organization across any channel.

The report finds it can be difficult for buyers to effectively compare similar or overlapping offerings from providers that stem from their different origins and, in many cases, do not directly compete against one another. The breadth of scope and expertise explains why the mix of components, users and use cases has been so diverse across CXM products.

The ISG Buyers Guides for CXM define five core areas of platform functionality across departments that combine to form an enterprise software solution: knowledge management, resource management, automation, analytics and customer journey management.

CXM software is early in its development maturity, the report finds, and it is rare to find a single offering that fits into all five areas. Many software providers start with an emphasis on their areas of origin and build additional capabilities over time.

The ISG Buyers Guide for CXM evaluates software providers and products based on support for analytics, customer journey management, knowledge management, CRM platform support, operational resource management, and process control and optimization. To be included in the CXM Buyers Guide, products must include capabilities from three of four of the following areas: resource management, automation, analytics and customer journey management. Separate Buyers Guides on Customer Journey Management (CJM) and Knowledge Management (KM) are available to more specifically examine those software categories.