It’s finally that time of year again… March Madness! And in honor of the basketball tournament, Capterra has decided to launch our own little competition. But instead of cheering on your alma mater through this tournament, our competition will feature your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
Introducing Capterra’s CRM Madness!
CRM software is one of the most critical applications for businesses because it allows them to keep track of their most important assets— their customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big, multinational company or a one-man shop; you likely need a way to keep track of your sales and organize your customer contacts. But most full-scale CRMs also allow you to track leads and prospects too, so they’re often confused with Sales Force Automation or Contact Management software. With so many similar solutions on the market, not to mention a crowded CRM field (we’ve got 350+ in our directory), it’s difficult for CRM buyers to
figure out where to even start.
That is, until CRM Madness.
Rules of the Game
CRM Madness officially begins this Wednesday, March 14th at crmmadness.capterrra.com. The tournament will list 64 popular CRM software providers in a full bracket of one-on-one matchups. Each solution will have the chance to advance through up to 6 rounds of the tournament, culminating in the CRM Championship Game, which will take place on April 2nd-4th. Capterra will crown the overall CRM Champion on Thursday, April 5th.
Starting on Wednesday, CRM customers, employees, and fans can vote once per day for their favorite solution. Here’s how to vote:
- Go to http://crmmadness.capterra.com
- Find your CRM on the bracket
- Hover over their name and a button will pop up where you can click “Vote”
But, it’s not all about who can get the most votes. Each round of the tournament will also take into account a specific company metric (listed below). The company metric will account for 50% of each CRM’s overall “score” for that round, and votes during that round will make up the other 50%. The CRM solution with the higher combined score in each matchup will advance.
*Note- We’ll weigh the metrics accordingly so that they actually only account for 50%. For instance, if a CRM has 100,000 web visitors but 1,000 votes, their score would not just be 101,000. The percentage of votes they have compared to their opponent would make up 50% of the score, and the percentage of web traffic they have compared to the opponent makes up 50%*
Selection Sunday
Like any good competition, not everyone is eligible to play in CRM Madness. Our selection committee was hard at work (and not just on Sunday) to determine which 64 vendors deserved a spot in the Big Dance. We considered all 350+ solutions listed in our CRM directory, but upon closer examination, decided to eliminate certain types of CRMs. For instance, if the CRM only catered to a niche audience- like nonprofits, telecoms, or ad agencies – then they were eliminated from contention. Not because we don’t think those should count as CRMs, but because we wanted the 64 competing vendors to be applicable to a broad audience of software buyers, not just one specific industry. Also, if the CRM did not have full customer and prospect management capabilities, then it was eliminated. For example, if it was solely live chat software or a call center CRM, then we did not include it in the list.
From there, solutions were ranked by all of the company metrics we listed above. We applied an algorithm to “weight” each metric accordingly, and then ranked the solutions 1-64. Thus, our CRM contenders were selected!
We also “seeded” each team based on their overall ranking. So, on the tournament bracket, the top four CRMs will be listed as a “1 seed”, while the bottom four CRMs will be listed as a “16 seed.” In the first round of CRM Madness, ones will face sixteens, twos will face fifteens, threes vs. fourteens, and so on.
Bubble Teams
We admit that this selection process is not perfect. What anyone would consider their “top” CRM has a lot to do with their specific company’s needs, so it’s difficult to use these metrics to say that these are the 64 “best” overall CRMs (which is definitely NOT what we’re trying to say). The point of CRM Madness is, based on performance metrics, these 64 seem to be the most popular solutions out there (and still within the defined parameters outlined above). And that’s why we need your votes to help us figure it out! There were quite a few CRMs just on the cusp of making it into the tournament based on the numbers. If you don’t see your CRM featured in the tournament, please let us know. Leave a comment on this post or shoot us an email, and we’ll check them out to make sure they’re included in our directory and considered for future promotions.
Live Coverage
So, now that we’ve got you up-to-speed on how CRM Madness works, how are you going to stay-in on all the action this month? There’s a few ways…
- Bookmark http://crmmadness.capterra.com and come back daily to vote and see how your CRM is doing
- Visit this blog for round-by-round coverage of the weekly matchups
- Follow Capterra on Twitter, and catch all the buzz on the tourney’s hashtag: #CRMmadness
And please let colleagues know about CRM Madness so that they can vote too! Hopefully your office-mates will all be rooting for your CRM, and if they’re not- maybe you need to check out the other contenders to see if it’s time to switch.
Comments (4)
This contest is nice. I think there is a flaw in this, and Katie correct me if I am wrong:
The number of customers and the yearly revenues are provided by the vendor not a third party! How is that Fair? Most of the vendors are private companies except 3-4 so there is no way you can determine their revenues on your own.
Tom- thanks for your comment! As for the number of customers and revenue, yes… they were provided by the vendors. We asked all of the vendors for this information prior to the launch of the contest, and for those that did not or could not respond, we only counted what was publicly released by the vendors in their press releases, financial statements, etc. We were able to find this data for more than half of the vendors on the list when putting together the rankings. Could they be fabricated by the private companies? Perhaps… but we’re assuming most companies would be honest in those types of public announcements. Also, the number of customers will only become a factor for the Elite 8, and revenue only for the Final 4, so votes will become even more important/carry more weight as the rounds move on (especially if several companies in those final rounds are not public).
[...] see CRM vendors and fans across the globe getting in on the tournament action. As I explained in my last post, votes accounted for 50% of the CRM’s score for the first round, and the other 50% was determined [...]
[...] 2012, Capterra hosted the first ever CRM Madness competition. Sixty-four leading CRM software solutions went head-to-head in a March Madness-style bracket. [...]