Most vendors offering innovative products or depth in marketing resource management (MRM) solutions remain comparatively small (Gartner estimates that 11 of the 18 vendors in this Magic Quadrant have less than $15 million in total revenue). Therefore, buyers will have to make trade-offs between overall vendor viability and the potential of a solution to deliver competitive advantages. The value propositions of the largest enterprise application vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, have traditionally been in integrating their marketing applications with other business applications in their suite, rather than the depth of MRM capabilities, marketing innovation and strong experience with MRM in the market. However, market consolidation is reshaping the large-vendor market, with IBM's acquisition of Unica and Teradata's acquisition of Aprimo giving leading MRM capabilities to two new larger players. Kodak's development of MRM capabilities demonstrates that large companies can also build competitive MRM solutions.

Buyers should carefully evaluate their deployment options (on-premises, hosted and on-demand), because options are expanding, thus impacting the value propositions of different product lines. We expect to continue to see new entrants into the MRM market, but expect the pace of consolidation to increase over the next two years. Vendors, particularly those with less than $15 million in revenue, may not survive and are increasingly likely to be acquired by larger players. We expect about half of these smaller players to be acquired or go out of business over the next three years.

Interest in MRM continued to grow in 2010 as investments in marketing automation moved from a "nice to have" to a "must have" and marketing organizations look to do more with less. Growing interest is driven by several factors, including an increased focus on marketing costs and the financial management of marketing, the difficulty justifying marketing budgets, interest in managing and lowering agency costs, the desire to measure all marketing initiatives, the need to achieve a faster time to market, reduced resources (budget and people), the focus on reducing marketing waste and the need to balance corporate versus local marketing control. These factors are also driving larger vendors to invest in marketing automation and MRM, as evidenced by the acquisitions of Unica by IBM and Aprimo by Teradata.

Based on the vendors that Gartner tracks, we estimate that there are more than 3,000 MRM implementations in midsize and large companies, up 25% from an estimated 2,400 in 2009. In 2010, there were more than 600 new MRM implementations. Gartner sees MRM expanding within organizations in three ways: (1) global expansion; (2) increase in number of users within a region; and (3) broadening MRM capabilities across the five areas of MRM competency. Gartner also sees MRM moving more firmly into the midmarket with more midmarket organizations adopting MRM, particularly the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and hosted deployment options.

Eighteen vendors currently meet the minimum criteria for inclusion in the 2011 Magic Quadrant update. No vendors were dropped and no new vendors were added, except through acquisitions of existing vendors (e.g., IBM via Unica acquisition, and Teradata via Aprimo acquisition). Gartner is currently tracking several MRM vendors that do not yet meet minimum criteria to be included in the Magic Quadrant. These include BrandSystems, Infor, Longwood Software, Marketingunity and Mtivity among others. These vendors were not included because they did not meet the minimum criteria for revenue or number of clients.

Large vendors are clearly getting interested in MRM and marketing applications more generally. IBM acquired Unica in 2010 and Teradata acquired Aprimo in 2011. Gartner expects consolidation of the MRM market to increase over the next two years with at least two to three more large vendors entering the market or increasing their product strength via acquisition. Consolidation is driven predominately by two factors: (1) the need to expand MRM capabilities to meet client requirements; and (2) the growing interest and investment in MRM makes it an attractive market to larger application vendors. New entrants are still expected in the MRM market, but the window of opportunity will close for small vendor entrants as consolidation increases among larger players. Large players who could enter this market include Adobe, EMC and Microsoft. Eloqua, Marketo and Neolane are other likely entrants that have some MRM functionality already but don't sell a prepackaged MRM solution.

The most important drivers influencing vendor selection were that MRM functionality met the organization's requirements, the vendor had an understanding of business needs, the robustness of MRM functionality, the vendor was viewed as a strategic partner, pricing (total cost of ownership) and good quality of response to RFP/presentation of capabilities. Of the vendor references surveyed for this Magic Quadrant, 40% were using an on-premises solution, 39% a solution hosted by a third party and 21% an on-demand/SaaS solution. Twenty-four percent stated that implementation took one to three months, 33% said four to six months, 37% said seven to 12 months and 6% said more than 12 months. Sixty-three percent stated the implementation time was about what was expected, with 23% reporting it as longer and 14% reporting it as shorter than expected. Eighty-three percent of references used their own internal staff for implementation, 62% used professional services from the vendor and 15% used one or more external system integrators. Forty-seven percent stated that the solution required some customization and 24% required configuration. Twenty percent reported using the application out of the box. The range of customization varied from zero to more than 75%. Sixty percent reported that they achieved their expected business results, and 32% stated that their results were better than expected, with only 8% stating they were worse than expected.

To help further evaluate MRM vendors based on your own requirements, see "Toolkit: How to Create a Marketing Resource Management Application RFP."

MRM is a set of processes and capabilities designed to enhance a company's ability to orchestrate and optimize internal and external marketing resources. MRM applications enable companies to:

• Plan and budget for marketing activities and programs.

• Create and develop marketing programs and content.

• Collect and manage content and knowledge.

• Fulfill and distribute marketing assets, content and collateral.

• Measure, analyze and optimize marketing performance.

Vendors in the MRM Magic Quadrant are assessed on their ability to support each of these five MRM competency areas.

Criteria for inclusion were updated slightly this year to reflect market growth and trends. Revenue was increased slightly, as was the number of net-new clients. We also included a criteria that the vendor provide prepackaged software as buyers shift their preference to software solutions, as opposed to custom-made solutions. To be included in the 2011 MRM Magic Quadrant, a vendor must demonstrate:

Market Traction and Momentum:

• Vendor has at least 25 production customers for MRM functionality, each with at least an average of 25 weekly users.

• Vendor has at least 10 new customers for MRM in the past four quarters.

• Vendor has generated at least $5 million (U.S. dollars) in revenue for MRM in the past four quarters.

• Vendor supports existing clients across three or more countries in two or more major geographies (North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, South America, Central America, the Middle East/Africa).

MRM Product Capabilities:

• Vendor provides a prepackaged software solution targeted to MRM buyers and supports ongoing R&D development of its software.

• Vendor must support MRM functionality for at least three of the five outlined components — (1) planning and financial management; (2) creative production management; (3) marketing asset/knowledge management; (4) marketing fulfillment; and (5) MRM analytics and optimization.

Short-Term Viability:

• Vendor has sufficient professional services to fulfill current and future customer demand during the next 12 months.

• Vendor has at least enough cash to fund a year of operations at its current burn rate.

No new vendors added. IBM enters the market via its acquisition of Unica, and Teradata via its acquisition of Aprimo.

As the market has matured and client demands have increased for prepackaged solutions with global support, we are now using the full complement of evaluation criteria available for Magic Quadrants.

Product/Service (High): Product and service remains one of the key differentiators in vendor capabilities, and it is an important criterion for vendor selection among leading companies looking for a competitive advantage. Therefore, this capability has the highest weighting, compared with other criteria. Subcriteria include specific functionality and solution capabilities for planning and financial management (25%); creative production management (25%); marketing asset and content management (10%); marketing fulfillment (15%); measurement, reporting, dashboards, analysis and optimization (15%); and architecture — for example, openness, flexibility, usability and workflow (10%).

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) (High): In a market where there are many small vendors, viability is also an important criterion, and it gets a high weighting. Subcriteria include overall financials (40%), MRM-related revenue (40%) and partner strategy (20%).

Sales Execution/Pricing (Standard): The ability of the vendor to provide global sales and distribution coverage of its MRM solution directly and/or through partnerships. Vendors must also have specific experience selling MRM to the appropriate buying center (marketing and IT), and offer consistent and transparent pricing models and structures. Pricing structures that support both large and small and midsize businesses (SMB), and both in-house and SaaS-based deployments, are also important. Although less important than product capability or the overall viability of the vendor, other criteria, such as the flexibility of deployment models (on-premises, hosted and on-demand) and pricing, are important client considerations. Subcriteria include flexibility in deployment models (75%) and pricing models (25%).

Market Responsiveness and Track Record (High): Assessment of the desire, expertise and organizational flexibility needed to perceive evolving customer requirements and articulate that insight back to the market, as well as create future MRM products in line with this, change. The key evaluation criteria are the responsiveness of the vendor to the market, as well as of the market to a vendor and its solution, and the customer's experience working with that solution in its geography and industry. These criteria are given the third highest weighting, along with the customer experience.

Marketing Execution (Standard): The ability of the vendor to consistently generate market demand and awareness of its MRM solution through marketing programs and press visibility. The clarity, quality, and creativity that go into this are just as important as the revenue assigned to generate new leads and reinforce/increase brand awareness. This evaluates the vendor's marketing strategy and execution to build recognition for the MRM solution in ways that gain traction for the MRM solution across geographies and industries. This criterion receives a standard weighting.

Customer Experience (High): Assessment of the aspects related to ensuring that each customer has ongoing success with their MRM deployment. Aspects considered include implementation services and partners, global technical support (direct and via partners), account management, user groups/panels and customer communities. Each vendor must provide a sufficient number of recent references to prove the ongoing viability and acceptance of its product in the marketplace. This evaluation criterion takes into account customer ratings, reviews and evaluations of the company, its MRM solution (functionality, architecture, usability), implementation services, account management and ongoing customer support. This criterion receives the third highest rating, along with market responsiveness and track record.

Operations (Standard): This criterion explores each vendor's ability to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, such as skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles, which enables the vendor to operate effectively and efficiently. This includes management experience and track record, and the depth of staff experience, specifically in the MRM market. The vendor must have sufficient professional services (in-house or through third-party business consultants and system integrators [SIs]) to meet evolving customer requirements. Implementation and support are also relevant considerations during vendor evaluation, although they are less important than product capability and viability. This criterion receives the same weighting as sales execution/pricing. Subcriteria include customer service and support (50%), and professional services (50%; see Table 1).

As the market has matured and client demands have increased for prepackaged solutions with global support, we are now using the full complement of evaluation criteria available for Magic Quadrants.

Market Understanding (High): The vendor's understanding of the MRM market, and its specific value proposition to marketing personnel, is critical when selecting a vendor with a vision that meets your needs. Therefore, this criterion receives one of the highest weightings.

Marketing Strategy (Standard): The company's marketing strategy is critical to its ability to gain broader recognition for its MRM solutions. We assess the strategy's consistency, clarity and degree of associated differentiation in regards to the positioning of MRM both internally and externally, and in line with the company's overall vision and brand values. This criterion receives a standard weighting.

Sales Strategy (Standard): The company's sales strategy is critical to market penetration and global expansion. We assess the go-to-market approach for selling the MRM product and services, both directly and through partnership networks globally. A diverse range of aspects spanning from strategic account management to industry expertise/targeting is assessed. This criterion receives a standard weighting.

Offering (Product) Strategy (High): Innovation and vision across the breadth and depth of product capabilities are critical to continuing to meet the needs of a maturing market in the five competency areas of MRM. Therefore, this criterion also receives the highest weighting. Subcriteria include specific functionality and solution capabilities for planning and financial management (15%); creative production management (15%); marketing asset and content management (10%); marketing fulfillment (25%); measurement, reporting, dashboards, analysis and optimization (25%); and architecture — for example, openness, flexibility, usability and workflow (10%).

Business Model (Standard): The business model for how a vendor aligns marketing and sales strategies for particular industries and geographies to deliver on its MRM value proposition is an important component of its vision, although less so than market understanding and product capability. It includes an evaluation of how well the vendor mobilizes resources and leverages partners to go to market and successfully execute.

Vertical/Industry Strategy (Low): Here we evaluate the vendor's go-to-market strategy for industries, solution capabilities (product verticalization), industry templates and packaging, and plans for vertical industries. This criterion receives a low weighting.

Innovation (Standard): Here we assess the vendor's innovation in new and emerging areas of MRM, such as knowledge management, social networking, mobile connectivity, marketing mix optimization, scenario planning/forecasting and order management. This criterion receives a standard weighting.

Geographic Strategy (Low): This criterion assesses the vendor's global understanding of MRM requirements and its strategy and plans for geographical expansion, including marketing, sales, implementation and customer support. This criterion receives a low weighting (see Table 2).

Leaders in the MRM market demonstrate exemplary performance. They deliver breadth and depth of integrated MRM functionality on large, enterprisewide and global implementations that extend MRM across the marketing organization and outside the database marketing domain. Leaders successfully articulate business propositions that resonate with buyers.

Challengers have entered the MRM market primarily to provide offerings that complement their established business applications. In doing so, they expect to leverage their large installed bases. They typically offer breadth of functionality, although often at the expense of depth and innovation. They provide value in terms of ease of integration with their enterprise applications, but have a diminished understanding of market trends and marketing buyers. Challengers are unable to consistently and effectively articulate their visions, or they have not mobilized their resources to excel in the market segment.

Visionaries have a strong vision for applying technology to MRM-related issues. They are distinguished by the openness and flexibility of their application architectures, and they offer depth of functionality in the areas they address. However, they may have gaps relative to broader functionality requirements, and may have less market penetration and momentum compared with market leaders. A Visionary vendor is a market thought leader and an innovator in one or more of the five competency areas of MRM. However, visionaries will need to grow more to achieve sufficient scale in the MRM market, and to provide more-consistent execution, to become leaders.

Niche Players perform well in a small segment of the MRM market. They have a limited ability to innovate or outperform other vendors. They are focused on a specific functionality, geography or industry. They usually lack depth of functionality, and they have gaps relative to broader MRM functionality requirements. Niche Players have limited implementations and support services for MRM, and may not have achieved the necessary scale to solidify their market positions. This quadrant also includes vendors that are not actively selling MRM to the broader market, and are only selling to established clients.

Adnovate is a small, privately owned company headquartered in the Netherlands. It is a Niche Player for its predominately regional focus and presence, as well as its primary focus on marketing asset management and fulfillment. Consider Adnovate if you are a European-based company looking for a marketing asset management and fulfillment solution.

• Growth: Adnovate continues to grow, albeit at a smaller rate compared with other comparable MRM vendors of its size. Adnovate reports approximately 8% growth overall and approximately 10% for MRM specifically. Approximately 80% of its revenue is MRM-related. Gartner estimates 2010 revenue to be between $8.5 million and $10 million. It added 15 net-new MRM customers this past year, with additional cross-sells into the existing client base.

• Asset management and fulfillment: Adnovate provides a broad set of MRM capabilities across planning and budgeting, creative production management, marketing asset management and fulfillment. However, its core competency and focus remains on supporting brand management and the end-to-end process, from creative idea to fulfillment. Adnovate supports a variety of media and content formats, including print, direct marketing artwork, video, brochures and leaflets, press kits, newsletters, presentations, online advertising, catalogues, POS and PDF. New developments in 2010 included campaign manager, PDF annotations, marketing control room (back office), crop and resize, outlet information management (POS-carrier profiling per outlet), product information management (PIM; translated product texts) and automated shop-specific distributions (distribution lists). Planned enhancements include finalizing packaging management, further development of product information management and improved digital asset management (DAM).

• Deployment options: Adnovate supports both on-demand (SaaS] multitenant model) and on-premises solutions. The on-demand platform is based on Oracle and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE). Most clients currently use the SaaS option.

• Customer feedback: References reported adequate satisfaction with DAM/enterprise content management (ECM), marketing fulfillment and reporting capabilities. References also give good satisfaction ratings for ease of use, ease of installation, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, value of solution to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. References cited strengths in ease of use and personal attention.

• Financial management: Although Adnovate has developed some new capabilities for budgeting (e.g., costing), it does not provide as robust of capabilities compared with leading MRM vendors. The solution provides some capabilities for distribution partners/dealers to check budgeted amounts and compare budgets with what has been spent. This functionality is good to manage market development funds, but not for general financial management across all of marketing. Clients looking for more of a financial management tool for corporate marketing should assess Adnovate's capabilities compared with their requirements before buying.

• Increased competition: Adnovate will be increasingly challenged in its European markets, as the enterprise marketing management (EMM) vendors, such as Aprimo, Assetlink and Unica, develop a strong MRM client base in Europe, and larger vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, mature their MRM interfaces and functionality. It can be difficult for a European vendor to expand into North America, and Adnovate will need to compete with new entrants such as BrandMaker and Orbis Global, which are establishing a physical presence.

• Small vendor: Adnovate is a small vendor, with less than $12 million in revenue, and it is susceptible to strong fluctuations in the market. It could be an attractive acquisition target for companies wanting to augment their MRM capabilities or expand into Europe. Clients should carefully weigh the risks of doing business with a small vendor versus the business benefits they can gain from using its software.

• Prospect/client feedback: The top three reasons that references of other vendors cited for not choosing Adnovate were lack of robust MRM functionality, lack of MRM expertise and the vendor was not viewed as a strategic partner. References gave low satisfaction ratings to knowledge management and budgeting/financial management. Some clients have stated that the integration with Kodak SRS can be slow.

Alterian is a Niche Player for its focus on pushing its MRM solution as part of its integrated marketing suite, rather than as a separate solution. Companies looking for an MRM solution as part of campaign or engagement management should consider Alterian.

• Overall revenue: Alterian's revenue has grown more than 15% from 2009 to 2010. Alterian reported revenue of 38 million GBP in 2009. Gartner estimates that revenue for 2010 will be between 40 million and 45 million GBP. However, Gartner estimates that MRM revenue is lower, around 2 million to 4 million GBP, compared with other solution areas. Alterian continues to develop its direct selling model, adding over 20 new salespeople last year. Most of its revenue comes from campaign management and Web content management.

• Broad MRM solution: Alterian offers a broad MRM suite that supports planning (calendaring, metadata and record for operational marketing data, document repository), creative production management (workflow, project management), marketing asset management (asset and media management, including audio and video, and integration with campaign management and Web content management), marketing fulfillment (cross-channel delivery, including Web, e-mail, social media and traditional channels) and analytics (status track and dashboards). Most of the solution provides simple MRM capabilities used to support or augment its campaign management capabilities. Its core competency lies in content management and analytics. However, the strength of content management is in Web content management and analytics in campaign measurement. Its MRM capabilities are primarily embedded in its campaign/engagement management solution with integration to its content management solution.

• Platform R&D: Alterian has rewritten its campaign management and MRM capabilities onto a new platform, Alterian Alchemy, with one code base. The new Alterian Customer Engagement Platform will be generally available in 1Q11. The new solution will provide a more integrated set of campaign management and MRM capabilities for clients.

• Deployment options: Campaign and engagement management, as well as content management, can be hosted by Alterian, hosted by its marketing service partners or deployed on-premises.

• Partners: Alterian has a large network of marketing service providers (MSPs), including Acxiom, Experian, Epsilon, Harte-Hanks, Merkle, Allant, Donnelley Marketing and KnowledgeBase Marketing, that can sell and host its marketing solutions. It is an attractive option for midsize clients wanting campaign management augmented by MRM capabilities.

• Customer experience: References report high satisfaction with functionality for creative production management, asset management and marketing fulfillment. However, outside of content management, these capabilities are being used primarily to augment campaign management, rather than more-sophisticated MRM requirements. Clients report reasonably good satisfaction levels for ease of use and performance/scalability.

• No prepackaged MRM solution: Alterian sells its MRM capabilities as part of its campaign and customer engagement solutions. Aside from content management, it does not sell an MRM solution or modules of MRM separately. Clients must purchase campaign or engagement management to be able to receive planning, marketing fulfillment and analytics capabilities. Clients looking for a broader set of MRM capabilities beyond content management as a stand-alone solution should consider alternatives.

• No MRM SaaS solution: Although Alterian provides Web analytics, social media monitoring and e-mail as a SaaS-based solution, MRM capabilities via its campaign or content management products are not available in a multitenant SaaS model. Clients looking for a SaaS solution for MRM should consider alternatives.

• MSP experience with MRM: Alterian sells primarily through a partner network (including MSPs, agencies and system integrators) that has strong experience in database marketing, but not with MRM. These partners still need to gain more experience with hosting MRM solutions to achieve market credibility. Alterian must continue to educate its MSP partners and gain referenceable clients.

• MRM investment: Although Alterian has made significant investments in social media, Web content management and Web analytics, it has made relatively few in the core areas of MRM, such as planning, financial management, creative production management and marketing fulfillment. Thus, gaps between its capabilities and those of its MRM competitors are broadening. Some clients have reported customization of higher than 50% to fill these gaps.

• Limited MRM visibility: Alterian has little visibility in the MRM market, given its predominate focus on campaign management, Web content management and analytics.

• Prospect/client feedback: The main reasons that references for other vendors cite they did not select Alterian were that the MRM solution did not meet their requirements, the vendor was not viewed as a strategic partner, lack of robust MRM functionality and pricing (total cost of ownership). Clients report lower satisfaction levels with professional services and ease of installation.

Aprimo is a Leader for its broad and deep solution, MRM experience, client maturity and continued market traction. Consider Aprimo for the breadth and depth of its MRM solution. In January 2011, Teradata acquired Aprimo.

• Growth in MRM: Aprimo reports that it generated $80 million in revenue in 2010. Aprimo continued its momentum in MRM during 2010, adding 44 new MRM customers and expanding its software subscriptions with an additional 90+ existing customers.

• Broad and deep solution with mature implementations: Aprimo's solution provides a broad set of MRM functionality, with capabilities in each of the five competency areas, including deep functionality in planning, budgeting and creative production management. The vendor offers two products with similar origins and functionality: Aprimo Marketing Studio On Demand (a multitenant SaaS architecture) and Aprimo Marketing Studio (a single-tenant architecture that can be hosted by Aprimo, Aprimo's partners or on-premises by the customer). Aprimo continues to have some of the most-advanced MRM clients, with thousands of users and second-generation MRM sophistication pushing the limits of MRM functionality in financial management and creative production management in particular.

• Continued investment: R&D investments included improved online annotation using Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the user experience with a richer set of capabilities that support video, websites, microsites and e-mail formats. It also improved its industry solutions for compliance review with review meetings and electronic signature capabilities. It also enabled spend management by brand. It streamlined user access via mobile, including access by marketers to complete tasks, view reports and perform approvals. Sales and field teams can use mobile to view digital history, access assets and send assets via e-mails. Its new dot release strategy accelerates features to the market and is on a digestible six-month release schedule.

• Deployment options: Aprimo offers on-premises, hosted and SaaS options. It has greatly simplified and improved its pricing relative to the competition, particularly with its on-demand offering, where it is very competitive in the market.

• Client feedback: References gave fairly high satisfaction ratings for product functionality across Aprimo's set of MRM functionality. The company also received good satisfaction ratings from references for ease of use, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, professional services and implementation, account management, value of MRM relative to costs, pricing, R&D investment and ability to meet both current and future requirements. Strengths cited include business understanding and partnership, customer focus group activities and flexibility of application to meet requirements.

• Increased MRM competition: Aprimo faces threats from larger enterprise application vendors as their solutions and the market mature, and from smaller vendors as they extend more globally into the market and establish a North American presence. We also expect entrance from large print management and document management vendors to increase competition. Gartner expects consolidation to increase over the next three years in the MRM market. This is evident with Teradata's acquisition of Aprimo.

• Marketing fulfillment: Aprimo has put less emphasis in R&D on the marketing fulfillment part of its solution, compared with financial management and creative production management areas. Marketing fulfillment is increasingly becoming a requirement for companies interested in marketing asset management and managing assets from idea to fulfillment. Aprimo will need to put more investment in this area over the next few years or acquire one of the emerging companies in this space.

• Partner risk for analytics: Aprimo relies heavily on partners for the marketing measurement process. It has partners for operational reporting (e.g., Crystal Reports, Microsoft Reporting Services), strategic reporting (SAP BusinessObjects, Cognos, MicroStrategy and Microsoft) and advanced analytics (e.g., SPSS, SAS, ThinkVine). As the market consolidates and partners move into competitive areas, this strategy poses risks with the health of the partnership long-term, particularly for strategic reporting and advanced analytics. The acquisition of Aprimo by Teradata will mitigate some of this risk given Teradata's stronger analytical competencies. However, Teradata will have to develop a broader set of analytical competencies in marketing outside of its traditional focus on database marketing or acquire another vendor focused on marketing performance management.

• Client confusion with acquisition: Gartner is seeing some market confusion with prospects and clients on what this acquisition means to the future of Aprimo's marketing applications. Teradata is best known for its database and analytic solutions, less known for marketing applications and not well known at all for MRM. A detailed product road map, continued support and execution will be key to alleviating potential concerns.

• Client/prospect concerns: The top three reasons that references for other vendors cited for not selecting Aprimo were pricing (total cost of ownership), Aprimo's MRM solution did not meet their requirements and poor response to RFP/presentation of capabilities. Weaknesses reported by references include quality of releases, too many steps required to make changes in the system and difficulties with customer support.

Assetlink, with its strong MRM vision, broad and deep solution, and continued growth remains a Leader. Consider Assetlink for the breadth and depth of its MRM solution and its expanding vision of MRM requirements.

• Continued growth and strong pipeline: Assetlink continued to grow in 2010 adding 10 new customers and cross-selling to existing clients. It reports that its pipeline for 2011 has increased five to six times that of prior years. Its pipeline includes both direct marketing/sales as well as support from its partners, including SAS.

• Broad MRM suite: Assetlink provides a broad MRM solution across all five MRM competencies, all organically built on one platform. With its strong focus on operational and creative processes, Assetlink has been one of the visionary pacesetters for an integrated MRM suite. The vendor has some of the more-sophisticated and mature MRM clients and users. It continues to set a visionary pace with its vision for marketing performance management, visual workflow and ease of deployment.

• MRM vision and R&D investment: Assetlink has one of the strongest visions for MRM in the market. New capabilities for 2010 include marketing performance and media mix analysis (integration to external media buy data sources and a marketing operational data store), agency governance (agency estimates, statement of work [SOW] management and agency benchmarking), updated marketing calendar, rules and taxonomy-driven collateral customization (customized/personalized product catalogs, scalable collateral customization), and improved workflow (integrated rich media and visual workflow). It introduced a 0% professional services deployment targeted at small and midsize companies.

• Deployment options: Assetlink provides flexibility for deployment models, including on-premises software licensing, hosted installation with software licensing and on-demand solutions (DAM, workflow and full MRM). Pricing is very straightforward at $100 per user, regardless of deployment model.

• Customer feedback: References gave high satisfaction ratings with product functionality across Assetlink's MRM capabilities. The company also received high satisfaction ratings from references for ease of installation, ease of use, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, customer service and support, professional services and installation, account management, pricing, value to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investment. Prospects cited ease of use and ease of configuration/implementation as strengths.

• Brand and market recognition: Assetlink compares well in head-to-head deals with competitors, such as Aprimo and Unica; however, it is not involved in as many deals as it should be, due to its more-limited market exposure and recognition. Assetlink has hired a new marketing team, and its growing pipeline is an indication that its new marketing strategy is starting to work.

• Implementation partners: Assetlink needs to develop stronger implementation partnerships with the larger system integrators to keep pace with its growing pipeline. Cultivating these partnerships will enable Assetlink to grow faster in the MRM market by scaling its ability to execute (that is, implementing sold solutions). Assetlink is currently working on partnerships with one or two of the larger system integrators.

• Potential acquisition candidate: The robustness of its solution, coupled with its smaller size, continues to make Assetlink an attractive acquisition target for those seeking to establish themselves in the MRM market. As Assetlink cultivates software partnerships with marketing vendors, it becomes likely that one of these will make an offer to acquire it. Gartner expects that Assetlink will receive offers to purchase it, even if it is not actively soliciting these offers. Assetlink is a privately held and self-funded company, so it is not obligated to financial investors and could decline any offers if it chooses. However, as market consolidation increases, we expect the offers to be potentially sizable and of interest to Assetlink.

• Client/prospect feedback: The main reasons references of the other vendors citing for not selecting Assetlink were the company's MRM solution lacked robustness and did not meet their requirements, followed by the vendor did not demonstrate an understanding of business requirements, poor response to RFP/presentation capabilities and the vendor was not viewed as a strategic partner. Some clients have stated concerns with technical issues and time to resolution. Some clients have stated issues with the flexibility and functionality of the workflow, and the ability to hide nonrequired fields.

BrandMaker is an MRM provider headquartered in Germany. BrandMaker is a Visionary vendor for its expanding MRM vision beyond brand management. Consider BrandMaker for its broad set of MRM capabilities, as well as its brand management focus.

• Continued growth: BrandMaker has grown from 439 customers to over 664 this past year. Most of this growth comes from its SaaS offering (140 customers for its on-premises solution, and another 524 for its SaaS offerings), adding 26 new, large enterprise customers and 199 SaaS customers. It reports that its revenue is up 35% from 2009 to 2010. It is one of the fastest growing MRM vendors. Average deal size has increased 30%. BrandMaker is expanding into North America with the opening of its office in Atlanta, Georgia, with its North American operations headed by former MarketingCentral (acquired by Unica, now part of IBM) founders. It has enhanced its sales and marketing capabilities and developed more-standardized professional services.

• Broad MRM solution: BrandMaker provides a broad MRM solution for financial management, creative production management, marketing asset management and marketing fulfillment. Its strength lies in its brand management capabilities and a usable interface that appeals to marketing buyers.

• R&D and industry innovation: BrandMaker had over 90 programmers working on the solution in 2010, making over 1,300 software enhancements. Major product investments in 2010 largely focused on the development of industry solutions for co-opt marketing (auto, insurance and franchise), retail management, labeling/packaging for compliance-focused industries (pharmaceuticals, chemicals and food). It also introduced a new solution for product content/information management. This new module does not replace product information management (PIM) solutions, but connects product data with marketing to create cross-media output for the media pool, job managers, media production (Web-to-print) and marketing planners.

• Deployment models: BrandMaker offers three solutions based on a Java EE architecture. BrandMaker Enterprise (for large clients) can be deployed on-premises or hosted by BrandMaker. BrandMaker Marketing Planner SaaS is a lighter version of the Enterprise Marketing Planner Module for small to midsize companies. BrandMaker Print & Agency provides creative agencies and prepress/printing providers with an on-demand solution, which includes the BrandMaker Enterprise modules Media Pool and Media Management.

• Customer experience: References report being reasonably satisfied with the solution, particularly for its calendaring and fulfillment capabilities. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, value of solution to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. Commonly cited strengths by references include usability, customer and technical support, and ongoing investment in the solution.

• Financial management: BrandMaker's solution includes budget reviews and approvals, cost tracking, comparison of planned versus actuals and budget alerts. Although it has a more developed financial management solution compared with other small, brand-management-focused MRM vendors in Europe, it does not have the same depth and complexity of capabilities of some of the MRM leaders. Clients looking for detailed financial management and corporate planning should ensure these capabilities meet their requirements.

• Customization: Clients report a wide range of customization requirements, from 10% to 50% customization during implementation. Clients should assess how much customization would be required to meet their requirements, and seek to minimize customization where possible.

• Competition: BrandMaker will be increasingly challenged in its European markets, as EMM vendors, such as Aprimo, Assetlink and Unica, develop strong MRM client bases in Europe, and larger vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, mature their MRM interfaces and functionality. Its expansion into North America is timely as investment in MRM increases in North America. It can be challenging for a small European vendor to expand into North America and gain acceptance and recognition. However, BrandMaker has hired seasoned MRM veterans responsible for the North American market.

• Potential acquisition target: BrandMaker is a small vendor, with less than $10 million in revenue. With it broad MRM solution and expanding vision for the products and geographies, it could be an attractive acquisition target for companies wanting to provide MRM capabilities or expand into Europe. Gartner believes that consolidation in the MRM market will continue to increase over the next two to three years.

• Customer/prospect feedback: The main reasons references for other vendors stated they did not select BrandMaker was the MRM solution lacked robust functionality and a lack of MRM expertise. References report more neutral levels of satisfaction (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied) with planning and budgeting capabilities. Clients have cited issues with product releases coming too quickly, resulting in inadequate training, poor software documentation and technical issues with releases.

BrandWizard is a Visionary for its creative development processes for brand management. Companies looking for brand management solutions for creative production management and marketing fulfillment should consider BrandWizard.

• Growth and viability: BrandWizard reported about 9% growth in 2010, which is not as strong as some of the other MRM vendors of comparable size. However, market momentum picked up in the second half of the year. It added 10 net-new MRM clients in 2010, with additional cross-sells into existing customers. BrandWizard is based in North America, but it has a presence in Europe and Asia/Pacific. By leveraging its parent company, Interbrand, which is a subsidiary of Omnicom Group, BrandWizard should continue to grow. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicom Group and part of Interbrand, BrandWizard is more viable than other companies its size.

• Brand management vision: BrandWizard's solutions focus predominately on automating brand management, including creative production management, marketing asset management and marketing fulfillment. It provides some basic budgeting and reporting capabilities for creative projects. The architecture is based on Microsoft .NET, and it integrates tightly with Adobe InDesign CS3 Server and above.

• Agency partners and integration: As part of Omnicom Group, BrandWizard has access to many agency partners that can offer an integrated set of brand strategy and brand management services. As companies look to their agencies to provide integrated services that leverage technology, BrandWizard has a significant opportunity to cross-sell within the larger agency client base.

• Deployment options: BrandWizard supports on-premises and hosted deployment options. It has developed a SaaS, multitenant deployment model with its hosted solutions this past year and will be actively marketing it in 2011. Few companies are using the solution on-premises. Most customers (80% of active base) choose the hosted solution. However, increased traction with the SaaS model is expected. Pricing includes a one-time project fee and managed services fees.

• Customer experience: References report being satisfied with BrandWizard's MRM functionality for creative production management and DAM/ECM. References also give good satisfaction ratings for ease of use, ease of installation, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, value of solution to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. References cited strengths in understanding of brand management and ease of use.

• Not a prepackaged product: BrandWizard did not offer a prepackaged solution at the time of this evaluation; rather, it creates a customized solution for clients, based on requirements and scoping. Thus, BrandWizard sells more services (70%) than software (30%). BrandWizard plans to release a prepackaged solution in February 2011. Clients seeking a prepackaged solution with little customization should evaluate that release.

• Strategic planning and financial management: Although BrandWizard has some basic planning (team setting) and budgeting capabilities for creative projects and store/market funds, it does not provide an automated solution for strategic planning and financial management at the corporate level. Companies looking for enterprise marketing planning, budgeting and automated financial management should consider alternative MRM providers. BrandWizard does provide integration to best-of-breed solutions in that area.

• Market visibility and scalability: BrandWizard must continue to gain broader visibility to grow faster. It does not have the market recognition that other marketing asset management vendors have and, therefore, places a strong reliance on its relationship to Omnicom and Interbrand in order to grow. It will also need to manage its growth incrementally, to ensure its ability to deliver, implement and support its highly customized solutions. It is harder to scale a heavily customized solution compared with more prepackaged and configurable solutions, which limits the number of clients BrandWizard can implement compared with other MRM vendors.

• Increased competition: As prepackaged vendors improve the configurability, usability and flexibility of their solutions, highly customized solutions will be less-desirable alternatives. Many of the more brand-management-focused MRM vendors have improved their capabilities for brand management and are closing the gap with BrandWizard's historical vision in this area. The SaaS option may help this transition to a certain extent, but it is still not a turnkey solution. Also, companies seeking to regain control over agencies and agency spending will be more likely to separate creative work from technology investments, and to move toward more pure-play software companies for MRM investment.

• Prospect/client feedback: The top three reasons that references for other vendors stated for not selecting BrandWizard included pricing (total cost of ownership), inadequate project implementation methodology and negative prior experience with BrandWizard. Client concerns centered on speed of customization requirements and inconsistencies in performance levels.

Capital ID is a Niche Player for its regional penetration of clients, with a strong focus on brand management. European-based companies interested in brand management and media planning should consider Capital ID.

• Growth: In 2010, Capital ID reported growth of approximately 10%. Gartner estimates Capital ID generated between $5 million and $6 million in revenue in 2010. Capital ID has over 60 customers, adding 14 new clients in 2010. Its partners Metia and Charterhouse in the U.K. generate 20% of Capital ID's revenue.

• Brand management: Capital ID offers a broad set of MRM capabilities, with a strong emphasis on brand management components, including creative production management (configurable workflow and project management), content management (media/image repository), marketing fulfillment (including procurement, purchasing and inventory functionality) and media planning (budgeting and project management).

• R&D investment: In 2010, Capital ID improved its usability and architecture with role-based access control, Asynchronous (Ajax) controls and the extension of Web services standards for connectivity to CRM and financial planning systems. Other improvements were to worklfow, budget and revenue management, reporting, printing on demand and multichannel distributed marketing. The company also optimized SharePoint integration for collaboration. Capital ID has an OEM contract with partners QlikView and SmartFocus to embed its capabilities to support reporting (dashboards, visualization and point-and-click data mining).

• Improved professional services: Capital ID improved its professional services for planning and deployment. It provides templates for best practices and three- to four-year road maps for deployment. Its user group meets three times per year to discuss best practices and provide input into solution development.

• Deployment options: ID Manager is available as an on-premises, hosted or SaaS solution. It currently has 10 customers using the SaaS solution. Rackspace and LeaseWeb provide third-party hosting.

• Customer experience: References report reasonable levels of satisfaction with the functionality of the solution, with higher levels of satisfaction for the calendaring and reporting capabilities.

• Financial management: Although Capital ID continued to improve its strategic planning, budgeting and financial management capabilities in 2010, these are not as robust as some of the leading MRM vendors' solutions. Clients should carefully evaluate these capabilities against their requirements, and should seek references using the solution at the corporate marketing level.

• Software-to-services ratio and customization/configuration: The software-to-services mix is 60% software to 40% services. This ratio suggests that there is a fair degree of implementation services for configuration and customization with the solution. Some clients are still reporting 30% to 50% customization of the solution. Some clients report higher levels of customization than configuration of the solution.

• Increased competition: Capital ID will be increasingly challenged in its European markets, as EMM vendors, such as Aprimo, Assetlink and Unica, develop strong MRM client bases in Europe, and as larger vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, mature their MRM interfaces and functionality. It can be difficult for a European vendor to expand into North America. As it expands into the U.K., Capital ID will be challenged by local vendors such as Vyre that have growing traction in the region.

• Potential acquisition candidate: As a small vendor, with less than $10 million in revenue, Capital ID is susceptible to strong fluctuations in the market. It could be an attractive acquisition target for companies wanting to augment their MRM capabilities, particularly those for brand management, or expand into Europe. Gartner expects increased consolidation in the market over the next three years, particularly in Europe, where many small vendors are headquartered in different regions. Clients should carefully weigh the risks of doing business with a small vendor versus the business benefits they can gain from using its software.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The main reasons that references of other vendors cite for not selecting Capital ID were poor response to RFP/presentation of capabilities and the company's MRM solution did not meet their requirements. Clients report being slightly dissatisfied with the ease of implementation. Clients have voiced concerns over resources and account management.

Direxxis is a Niche Player for its focus on MRM capabilities around asset management and fulfillment as part of a distributed marketing process focused primarily on the North American market. Consider Direxxis if you are a North American-based company looking for asset management and fulfillment capabilities to support a decentralized field force.

• Growth: Direxxis reports approximately 24% revenue growth from 2009 to 2010, with 12 net-new clients and additional cross-sells with existing clients. Gartner estimates Direxxis will generate between $8 million and $9 million in revenue in 2010.

• Marketing asset management and fulfillment: Direxxis' MRM value proposition and core competency center on marketing asset management and fulfillment via its dmEDGE solution is targeted at companies with a decentralized field force looking for a distributed marketing solution. The solution provides procurement capabilities for campaigns, and content by sales and distribution partners, including payment options. DmEDGE also provides prospecting and campaign management capabilities, which enable those in the field to gain access to customizable content and campaigns through one portal.

• MRM product expansion and R&D: Direxxis is expanding its MRM capabilities beyond its core value proposition of marketing asset management and fulfillment into creative production management. It released an Approval Module for reviews and approvals with expanded design tool adapters (e.g., QuarkXPress, InDesign, HTML, Text, Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop) and outputs (e.g., PDF, JPG, GIFF, Flash, Word, PowerPoint and Text). Other improvements include a user communication module for collaboration and knowledge sharing, product internationalization (English Chinese, German, Spanish and French), customization controls and enhancements to administration tools, usability and reporting. Plans for 2011 include dynamic document resizing, My Marketing Plan Module, marketing calendar, social marketing integration and continued internationalization.

• Solution options, SaaS and pricing: Direxxis has four solution options, called Editions: Group Edition, Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition, as part of its dmEDGE 4.0 solution. DmEDGE features a multitenant data architecture. DmEDGE servers and computing resources are shared between all dmEDGE clients on a server, but each client has its own set of data that remains logically isolated from data that belongs to all other tenants. Data is isolated by storing each client's (tenant) data in separate databases. Each client has its own dedicated set of application server instances. Pricing is very straightforward for the different editions, so clients can select the one that's most appropriate for their requirements. The pricing model uses a user-based SaaS model, with a monthly fee structure based on the number of dmEDGE modules and users required per client.

• Customer experience: Clients report high satisfaction levels with ease of use, ease of installation, customer service and support, professional services, pricing, account management and performance/scalability. General strength appears to be in management's ability to develop a close relationship with clients.

• Creative production management: Although Direxxis has added an approval module, it has historically not provided robust MRM capabilities via workflow and project management for managing the creative review and production processes. It has also added integration to the design tools mentioned above. However, these capabilities have not yet been validated in the market. Prospects looking for creative production management functionality should evaluate the new capabilities and ask for references specifically using those capabilities prior to selection.

• Financial management: DmEDGE does not currently have financial management capabilities for budgeting and tracking marketing spending. It does allow companies to check accounts and balances in the Marketing Fulfillment and Delivery Module. It does have the My Marketing Plan Module planned for 2011, which will include budgeting, financial management and calendaring capabilities.

• Analytics limited to reporting: MRM analytics are primarily reporting based on the other areas of Direxxis' solution. There are no advanced optimization capabilities for the media or marketing mix.

• On-premises deployment option: On-premises deployment is not a standard option. Direxxis is a marketing service provider, as well as a technology provider, and prefers to host its dmEDGE solution in its SaaS model. However, on-premises is a custom option.

• Competition and acquisition target: Direxxis will face increased competition as European brand management and marketing fulfillment vendors (e.g., BrandMaker, Elateral, Vyre) enter the North America market. They will need to market themselves more broadly in North America to compete. Gartner expects increasing consolidation in the MRM market over the next three years. As marketing fulfillment and distributed marketing management become a stronger part of MRM requirements, Direxxis could be an attractive acquisition target for vendors looking to expand their solution in those areas or for European vendors looking to expand into the North American market.

Elateral is a Visionary for its vision of marketing fulfillment. Consider Elateral for its strong marketing fulfillment capabilities, and its ability to manage the brand globally, while providing capabilities and rules for localization.

• Continued growth: Elateral continued to grow in 2009 and 2010, despite the tough economy, with stated revenue growth of 17% in 2010 (closer to 33% without factoring in exchange rate adjustments). However, net-new customers were low. Elateral reported revenue of 6 million GBP (approx US$9.5 million) in FY10.

• Marketing fulfillment: Elateral remains focused on marketing-fulfillment capabilities of MRM, where it continues to set the visionary pace for the market. It also provides content and asset management, extending this capability to field marketing and sales/distribution partners for dynamic content creation for a particular campaign or offer. It expanded its capabilities to support fulfillment via customizable e-mail campaigns and landing pages via its new Campaign Express solution.

• Increased R&D: Elateral is increasing its R&D spending this coming year by $1 to $1.5 million, compared with previous years. This past year, it enhanced usability and the user experience with the release of 7.0 and 7.1. It also introduced the delivery of 3D models, which allows rotating objects 360 degrees and magnification of the rotated objects for better viewing clarity. It also continued to enhance its reporting and dashboard capabilities. Upcoming releases 7.2 and 7.3 will improve reporting capabilities, allow autosave during customization, enhance packaging and 3D models, and improve workflow and integration with print service providers. Elateral will also improve its infrastructure for content delivery and cloud hosting, as well as integration and application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications. Using machine-assisted translation technology, it will improve content and user interface (UI) localization. Elateral also has plans for social media integration and syndication (e.g., Twitter).

• Cloud-based computing and deployment model: Elateral has partnerships with Akamai and Amazon S3 for creating a marketing content delivery network in the cloud. This network provides cloud-based hosting of assets, making content delivery and caching faster, with availability anywhere in the world. It is currently rebranding its Marketing Services Platform (Elateral MSP) to Marketing Services Cloud (Elateral MSC). The application is available in a multitenant, on-demand deployment model. Only under certain exceptions does Elateral provide a hosted, single-tenant deployment model. Rackspace provides managed hosting services and Akamai provides Web application acceleration for optimized global content delivery. No on-premises solution is available.

• Customer experience: References gave high satisfaction ratings to Elateral's marketing fulfillment and measurement/reporting capabilities. References were reasonably satisfied with ease of use, performance and scalability, customer service and support, value of solution relative to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investment. Clients cite strengths in terms of global language support, flexibility and scalability.

• Lack of planning and financial management capabilities: The vendor lacks MRM capabilities beyond those related to fulfillment and asset management. Clients looking for planning and financial management capabilities should consider alternatives.

• Advanced MRM analytics: Although Elateral has improved its reporting and dashboard capabilities, it does not provide advanced capabilities for simulation, optimization and cross-marketing performance management.

• Long-term viability: Elateral's predominate and visionary focus on one MRM competency could make it an attractive acquisition candidate for vendors that are adding greater marketing fulfillment capabilities to their product lines. This is a noted area of weakness for several MRM vendors. As this area of MRM matures, Gartner expects other MRM vendors to build or acquire these capabilities to round out their MRM solutions. Consolidation of marketing and MRM capabilities is increasing. Net-new customers was quite low in 2010. Elateral will need to increase its market penetration with new clients to remain viable.

• Software-to-services ratio: Elateral's software-to-services ratio is about 50% software to 50% services. Part of this is due to the extensive outsourcing services provided after implementation for the marketing fulfillment capability, and part is due to customization. Some clients have reported 50% or higher customization requirements; however, many expected that level of customization. It can be hard for a vendor to scale both software and services long-term.

• Prospect/client feedback: The main reasons references for other vendors did not select Elateral were that Elateral's MRM solution did not meet their requirements, the vendor did not demonstrate an understanding of their business needs and poor response to RFP/presentation capabilities. Elateral focuses predominately on marketing fulfillment, so the solution may not meet all the MRM requirements in other MRM areas. Clients looking at areas of MRM outside of marketing fulfillment should consider other vendors. Clients reported less satisfaction with the availability of prepackaged functionality and pricing. Some clients report high requirements for custom coding.

Kodak is a Challenger due to its large company size, potential resources to expend on MRM and general viability. Clients looking to automate creative production management and marketing fulfillment should consider Kodak for its general viability and promising MRM solution.

• Viability and MRM growth: Kodak is a $7.5 billion company with $1.4 in cash and cash equivalents as of September 2010. Its Kodak Services for Business is part of the company's Business Solutions and Services Group (BSSG). Kodak reports that it more than doubled its MRM revenue from 2009 to 2010. Gartner estimates it had between $9 million to $12 million in MRM revenue in 2010. It has 28 MRM customers, of which it added 10 new customers this past year.

• Marketing asset management: Kodak's core competencies for MRM reside in creative production management, DAM and marketing fulfillment. Its creative production management capabilities support business process workflow, template management, artwork creation and project management. It supports DAM and brand content management. Marketing fulfillment capabilities include Web-to-print, one-to-one marketing (personalization), catalog ordering and variable data print capabilities.

• R&D investment: Kodak developed campaign planning and execution capabilities this past year via a campaign management module. New enhancements include searchable views of new incoming assets/content, improved ability to related content in the system, and configurable options to streamline metadata tagging and file ingestion. Planned enhancements include enhanced search functionality, more configurable options for asset view layout, a new modular platform for creative production management and asset management, multichannel support for marketing fulfillment, bidirectional communication to marketing information systems, and Windows Server 2008 Adobe CS5 compatibility.

• Deployment options: Kodak's MRM solutions are available for deployment on-premises, hosted (separate instance) and SaaS (multitenant). Kodak provides its own hosting services.

• Customer experience: References report good satisfaction levels with creative production management and DAM/ECM capabilities. References are also highly satisfied with ease of installation, account management, pricing, value of MRM solution relative to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investment. References cited the configurable solution as a strength, as well as the collective intellectual capital of the Design2Launch team.

• Strategic planning and financial management: Although Kodak provides some basic budgeting capabilities associated with creative projects and new campaign planning capabilities, it does not offer a robust financial management solution or strategic planning for enterprise marketing. Clients looking for capabilities in this area will need to consider alternatives.

• Analytics and performance management: Kodak provides some basic reporting capabilities associated with its solution areas for marketing asset management. However, it does not provide advanced capabilities for strategic planning, simulation or optimization.

• Separate products: Kodak's MRM solution is made up of multiple product families. Creative production and marketing asset management are part of its Design2Launch solution, while marketing fulfillment is supplied through its InSite Storefront System solution. Campaign planning and execution, as well as reporting and analytics, are supported through InSite Campaign Manager. Clients looking for an integrated MRM solution across these competencies should evaluate integration between these solutions and seek references who have integrated the specific products of interest.

• Software-to-services ratio: Although the software-to-services ratio is improving, 63% software to 37% services, it is still high for services, which indicates a fair amount of potential customization and implementation services for clients. Some clients still report more than 30% customization requirements.

• Customer/prospect feedback: The main reason that references of other vendors report not selecting Kodak were that the company's MRM solution lacked robust functionality and did not meet their requirements. Concerns cited by clients include ongoing support and commitment to the MRM application.

MarketingPilot Software is a Niche Player due to its predominate geographical focus on North America. Clients looking for a broad MRM solution with good functionality at a lower price point should consider MarketingPilot, but should assess support capabilities in regions outside of North America, if required.

• Continued growth and geographical expansion: MarketingPilot grew its revenue approximately 20% to 30% during 2010, adding 30 net-new clients. MarketingPilot reports that its average deal size is up 20%, and reports some deals with large clients over $1 million. Although MarketingPilot does not report revenue as a private company, Gartner estimates its revenue to be $6 million to $12 million. Based on its current pipeline, it is projecting 40% growth in 2011. Approximately 25% of its customers are now outside of North America, predominately in Asia/Pacific and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Although many of its clients remain in the midmarket, larger enterprise clients are increasingly considering MarketingPilot, bringing the vendor into more-direct competition with Aprimo and Unica.

• Functional breadth: The vendor provides a broad set of MRM capabilities for planning, budgeting, procurement, project management, content/asset management, media buying and performance management. However, its capabilities are not as deep or complex as some of the market leaders.

• Deployment options and customization: MarketingPilot supports on-premises and hosted versions of its application. It does the hosting for its solutions. It does not support a multitenant SaaS option. MarketingPilot has upgraded its SaaS support to the MarketingPilot Cloud and added three times the hardware capacity and three times the bandwidth capability during 2010. Its cloud-based deployments have grown over 300%, while its in-house deployments have declined. MarketingPilot offers different customization options depending on the expected demand for the customization from other clients. If high demand from the market is expected for the functionality, then the price is lower than if only one client would likely use it. Customizations are written in one code base to facilitate the transfer of intellectual property (IP) into future versions of the product and improve upgradability to future versions.

• R&D investment: The vendor had three major releases (versions 9.0, 10.0 and 11.0) in 2010. Most of the emphasis in R&D focused on developing solutions in new areas of lead management, e-mail marketing and campaign management. As the midmarket looks for more-integrated, cloud-based solutions from a single vendor, expansion into these areas will improve the long-term viability of the product and continued market execution, and will increase cross-sell opportunities. MRM enhancements focused on performance and scalability of the application, improved workflow and graphical user interface (GUI), and enhancements to DAM and project request. For 2011, MarketingPilot has two major releases planned. It plans to continue new development for marketing automation, including segmentation, campaign management, lead management, Web analytics and social media, and it plans to continue to enhance its MRM functionality for workflow, DAM, approvals/markup and financial management.

• Customer experience: Clients report being satisfied with the MRM functionality. References also give good satisfaction ratings for ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, value of solution to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. Main strengths cited by references include prepackaged solution, ability to provide input into future enhancements, and knowledgeable and easy-to-work-with people.

• Marketing fulfillment: Although MarketingPilot offers some capabilities in this area, it does not provide print, procurement and localization capabilities. R&D investment in this area has not been as high as it has in areas of planning, financial management and creative production management. Clients with robust fulfillment requirements will need to consider alternatives or plan to integrate a third-party application with MarketingPilot.

• Global clients: Although approximately 25% of its sales are outside the U.S., MarketingPilot predominately sells into the North American market, with few personnel located outside the U.S. market. Global prospects should carefully assess the capabilities of the vendor to support multiple regions. Local support in regions outside the U.S. are not established. While consulting services are available globally, technical support is provided from a single U.S. facility.

• Potential acquisition candidate: As MarketingPilot gains increased visibility and traction, improves its marketing functionality, expands internationally and moves up market, it makes it an attractive acquisition target for a larger company looking to enter the MRM or marketing automation market.

• Customer concerns: Client concerns tend to focus on specific issues around functionality, such as the company's inability to batch-download several files. MarketingPilot intends to release this capability in 2011. Other clients have commented that the company's annotation capabilities are weak. MarketingPilot released enhanced annotation capabilities in November 2010 with release 11. Gartner will monitor client feedback to determine if this concern has been alleviated.

Oracle-Siebel is a Challenger, due to its overall viability and continued R&D investment in MRM for business process management (BPM) and marketing performance management. Clients looking for a broad set of MRM capabilities, as part of an integrated marketing or CRM solution, should consider Siebel Marketing.

• Growth in marketing: Oracle reports that Siebel Marketing license revenue and deal size continued to grow in 2010, particularly for campaign management and loyalty. However, more marketing deals included an MRM component, particularly for planning and performance management.

• R&D investment: Siebel Marketing offers MRM capabilities across all five MRM competency areas. However, its strengths lie in planning, budgeting and performance management. Oracle relies on integration to Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) for content management. MRM investments in 2010 focused predominately on BPM and marketing performance management, including advanced analytics for simulation and optimization. Enhancements have been made to Oracle BPM and Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) that will help aid integration and usability in the Siebel CRM application.

• Vision for analytics and performance management: Oracle leverages its Oracle Business Intelligence Suite to create a robust set of closed loop-marketing analytics for planning, optimizing and managing marketing, which it embeds in its Siebel Marketing solution. It is one of the hallmarks of its MRM offering. Traditionally, these capabilities have relied on historical analysis, but new releases include capabilities for simulation (forecasting), "what if" scenarios and resource/spending optimization.

• Deployment options: Siebel Marketing is available as an on-premises solution or hosted by Oracle On Demand and third-party vendors, such as Accenture and Extraprise.

• Customer experience: References reported being satisfied with the MRM functionality. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, value of solution to costs, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. A common strength cited by clients is integration to other Oracle applications.

• Production management: Workflow has become one of the main considerations for an MRM solution. Some clients have cited this as one of the main difficulties with the current Siebel MRM application. Integration with Oracle BPM should provide improvements in this area. However, BPM has not been fully embedded into the Siebel application, and no users are currently leveraging Oracle BPM in the context of Siebel MRM. Clients should carefully evaluate the integrated capabilities in this area prior to investing.

• Marketing fulfillment: Although Oracle offers some marketing fulfillment capabilities through its partner relationship management (PRM) solutions and Oracle Sales Library, these are not as robust as other MRM vendors, and they do not include print-on-demand and procurement capabilities. Clients have reported that localization capabilities are limited. As MRM requirements for marketing fulfillment increase, this is becoming a critical missing piece of Oracle's MRM functionality.

• On demand: Although some marketing and campaign-planning capabilities are available via Siebel CRM On Demand, a full set of MRM competencies is not available on demand or via a SaaS deployment model. Gartner is not aware of any clients using these to support strategic MRM initiatives. SaaS MRM capabilities will most likely be available in the Fusion CRM solution. However, Gartner does not expect to see MRM capabilities in Fusion CRM prior to 2012. Clients seeking an on-demand MRM solution should consider alternatives.

• Part of a suite solution: Companies that use Oracle-Siebel for MRM still primarily select it for integration with the broader Siebel Marketing suite, sales force automation and industry-specific capabilities, such as trade promotion management. There are few Siebel MRM stand-alone deals in which other parts of the Marketing suite are not being considered. Gartner does not see Oracle-Siebel very often in competitive best-of-breed MRM deals.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The main reasons references of other vendors cited for not selecting Siebel Marketing were the solution did not meet their MRM requirements and the vendor did not demonstrate an understanding of their business needs. Some issues cited by clients were that access to new functionality is tied to CRM application releases, and the cost of the initial solution relative to smaller vendors is high.

Orbis Global, headquartered in Sydney, Australia, is a Visionary for its broad MRM vision across all MRM competencies. Clients looking for an MRM vendor with a broad set of MRM capabilities should consider Orbis Global.

• Market traction and geographical expansion: Orbis Global reported revenue growth from 2009 to 2010 around 10%. It added 10 net-new MRM clients, with a few cross-sells into existing clients. In 4Q10, it established a physical presence in North America (Chicago and San Francisco) and reports a growing pipeline in the North American market (U.S. and Canada), with some large wins already. Strong traction in the North American market, which is currently experiencing a strong increase in MRM investment, coupled with continued R&D investment, could enable Orbis Global to become an MRM leader.

• Breadth of MRM: Orbis Global offers a broad MRM solution across all five MRM competency areas, making it comparable in its vision to Aprimo and Assetlink for offering a full MRM suite. Creative production management and asset management are areas of core strength in the product.

• R&D investment: In 2010, Orbis made a broad set of improvements across its MRM modules. For strategic planning and financial management, it improved reporting and controls, as well as the UI, creating new views and a personalizable interface leveraging Microsoft Silverlight. Orbis produced a new solution called "Creative Showroom" for the review of print-ready and multimedia files. It also developed a multichannel and collaboration solution for business-to-consumer (B2C) customers with multiple workstreams and channels. In the area of knowledge management, it developed automated tagging. For marketing fulfillment, Orbis had an upgrade to its local marketing solution, ArtBuild, with automated media distribution and the ability to send marketing content to printers with different formats. It developed a new activities solution with a configurable workflow platform and upgraded its Integration Toolkit. Plans for 2011 include continued workflow enhancements, local area marketing enhancements, a new marketing resource capacity solution, a trade channel portal, and improvements both to marketing financials and reporting and analytics.

• Deployment models: Orbis Global has predominately moved to a hosted SaaS model and has migrated almost all its on-premises clients to this model. It has hosting facilities in Illinois (U.S.), London and Sydney. It supports both multitenant and separate instance hosted models.

• Customer experience: References reported good levels of satisfaction with calendaring, creative production management and DAM/ECM capabilities. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, the value of the solution in terms of cost, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. Clients report that major strengths of the solution are ease of use and ease of implementation. They also state that Orbis has a good understanding of business issues and is customer-oriented.

• Advanced MRM analytics and reporting: Although reporting in the solution is good, there are no advanced capabilities for simulation or optimization. Clients have cited issues with the flexibility of configuration, and stated that the reporting and analysis of activities is too basic. Orbis Global is currently investing in R&D to improve in these areas.

• On-premises solution: Orbis Global will offer an on-premises MRM solution for clients who request this deployment model, but its preferred method is a hosted SaaS model, and its commercial model favors this deployment model.

• Small vendor: Orbis Global is a small vendor, with less than $10 million in revenue, and is susceptible to strong fluctuations in the market, so it could be an attractive acquisition target for companies wanting to augment their MRM capabilities or expand into the Asia/Pacific region. Clients should carefully weigh the risks of doing business with a small vendor versus the business benefits that can come from using its software. Gartner expects increased consolidation in the MRM market over the next three years.

• Increased competition: Orbis Global provides a robust suite of MRM capabilities, which could enable it to become a major player in the market. However, it has come later into the market in a less-developed region for MRM, compared with leaders like Aprimo and Assetlink. Closing the gap on both functionality and traction will not be easy. As the market matures, competition from larger companies like Oracle-Siebel and SAP will also increase as these companies improve their functionality to meet client demand.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The primary reasons references of other vendors stated for not selecting Orbis Global were that the company's MRM solution did not meet their requirements and poor response to RFP/presentation of capabilities. One of the concerns expressed by clients is the need to invest more in R&D to deliver on the road map in a timely fashion. Orbis Global has increased R&D commitments by 50% in 2011.

Saepio Technologies is a Niche Player focused mainly on marketing asset management and fulfillment, predominately in North America. North American prospects interested in managing marketing assets from idea to fulfillment should consider Saepio.

• Growth and partner strategy: Saepio continued to grow in 2010, adding 12 new customers. It reports approximately 34% growth in revenue from 2009 to 2010, with a 30% increase in recurring revenue. Gartner estimates Saepio's revenue between $8 million to $10 million. It has developed stronger partnerships for software (SAS and Unica) and services (Acxiom and MarketSphere).

• Local market enablement vision: The hallmark of Saepio's Marketing Asset Manager is its focus on sales enablement and brand management in local markets. Saepio's distributed marketing solution provides planning, budgeting, creative production management, asset management and reporting capabilities focused on making assets available for use in local markets. Saepio provides the ability to resize ads. It also provides a shopping cart for local markets, field sales and partners to procure collateral. Therefore, the marketing fulfillment capabilities are quite robust, with the other MRM areas built around the value proposition for local markets.

• Product enhancements: New capabilities for 2010 included the release of the MarketPort platform, which adds broader workflow functionality and cross-media functionality. It also enhanced its Marketing Asset Manager module with expanded flash versioning, automated content capture from external websites (e.g., Google Maps) and in-session role switching. It expanded its portfolio with Budget Manager, Mobile Marketing (SMS) and its Distribute and Print Network. Its 2011 product road map focuses on distributed marketing management via campaign management and enhancing its distributed marketing communication platform. Planned MarketPort enhancements in 2011 include landing pages, adwords and social capabilities for planned messaging. It will continue to expand its portfolio with ad network integration, location-based marketing/context computing and digital signage network integration.

• Deployment models: Saepio offers on-premises, hosted and managed (client-hardware-hosted and managed-by-Saepio) options. However, Saepio primarily serves clients through its SaaS model. Multitenant is standard, but single tenant is available.

• Customer experience: References reported reasonable levels of satisfaction with Saepio's MRM functionality, giving particularly high ratings to the marketing fulfillment capabilities. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, the value of the solution in terms of cost, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. Clients state that Saepio is a "partner" with employees who are dedicated, knowledgeable and easy to work with.

• Financial management: Although Saepio has developed a Budget Manager module and more financial management capabilities, these are not as robust or complex as the leading MRM vendors in the market. Clients should carefully evaluate whether these capabilities meet their requirements.

• Geographical coverage: Although Saepio supports international divisions of clients, most clients are headquartered in North America. It will leverage its partners (Acxiom, SAS and Unica) to help expand its sales outside of North America. Clients outside North America should assess resources for implementation, as well as those for ongoing support. Each customer has a dedicated account manager and access to a phone-based customer support center; standard support hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. U.S. Central time. Online support is available 24/7. Saepio provides 24/7 phone support to clients as needed.

• Potential acquisition target: Saepio provides some interesting capabilities that can augment other marketing and MRM solutions, and enable sales. As consolidation in the MRM market increases, Sapeio's specialty and innovative focus could make it an attractive vendor for acquisition. However, Saepio could also decide to make an acquisition itself, to either expand MRM functionality or expand in other geographical markets.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The main reasons references of other vendors cite for not selecting Saepio were that the company's MRM solution did not meet their requirements, the solution lacked robust MRM functionality and poor response to RFP/presentation of capabilities. Some clients have reported issues with things breaking or that the administration tools are cumbersome and there's a lack of sufficient documentation.

SAP is a Visionary for its growing MRM vision, product development focus and MRM innovation in new areas such as collaboration, but it is not a leader because of its inability to sell MRM as a stand-alone solution outside of its SAP client base. SAP customers and prospects looking for MRM capabilities should consider SAP CRM.

• Market momentum: Gartner estimates that approximately 50% of CRM sales include marketing licenses, with MRM capabilities being utilized in the majority of marketing clients. Revenue growth in North America has been particularly strong, with a focus on consumer products, automotive, high tech, manufacturing, travel/transportation and retail (mail order) industries.

• Go-to-market strategy: SAP has developed a go-to-market strategy to deliver value quickly and affordably with its CRM Rapid Deployment Solution. This solution provides preconfigured software with SAP's industry best practices and delivery in as little as six weeks with SAP Consulting's methodology. Pricing for this solution has three options: (1) per-user per-month subscription; (2) per-user per-perpetual license; or (3) per-user per-month for the hosted option.

• Broad MRM solution: SAP provides MRM capabilities for marketing, planning and budgeting; an integrated marketing calendar; marketing program management (including task management, templates and workflows); marketing analytics; and marketing collaboration. Within budgeting, SAP now offers new capabilities with Marketing Funds Management, which enables the establishment of marketing budgets and budget transfers, and direct tracking of funds consumed from campaigns and related purchase commitments and settlements. SAP provides third-party integration to DAM systems and a partnership with Open Text to resell Open Text's Digital Asset Management under the SAP banner — SAP Digital Asset Management by Open Text.

• MRM innovation: SAP has traditionally been a follower in the MRM space, developing capabilities after other vendors and the market have matured. However, SAP is showing vision and innovation in the area of collaboration with its on-demand SAP StreamWork solution. The StreamWork solution supports collaboration, teamwork and decision making by enabling marketing users to create, participate in and close specific activities. Participants both inside (e.g., marketing and procurement) and outside the organization (e.g., agencies, print shops, etc.) can be invited to participate in the activities. StreamWork can also be accessed from mobile devices for collaboration when out of the office. For its next CRM release, SAP has planned some more-advanced analytics, enhancements for marketing performance management, and marketing spend alignment and optimization.

• Customer-driven innovation: SAP continues to transform its MRM vision and products by listening to its customers and actively leveraging its "CMO Community," a professional community of chief marketing officers (CMOs), to provide feedback into product enhancements, as well as to craft its vision based on CMO requirements. This community includes SAP clients, as well as non-SAP clients, and it will help SAP not only with its next-generation products built for marketing users, rather than IT users, but also with building credibility in the market. Social media and SAP managed communities are used to gather customer feedback that supports product development and management.

• Customer experience: References report being satisfied with SAP's MRM functionality. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, the value of the solution in terms of cost, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments.

• Part of a suite solution: Most clients continue to state that they choose SAP for the integrated value proposition of MRM with other business applications for CRM, ERP and industries. As with many CRM suite initiatives, MRM does not lead or push sales of the suite. Gartner does not see SAP in competitive best-of-breed MRM deals where the client is not already an SAP customer.

• Sales execution: Most of the field is still geared to an ERP/IT sale, as opposed to a business sale with marketing. SAP is leveraging its CMO Community, CMO surveys, published books and papers, and speaking engagements to gain clout with marketing leaders. This is pushing more marketing clients to inquire about SAP Marketing solutions — many of whom have bought previous licenses (by IT) to actually implement.

• Production management: Business rules and workflow remain less flexible than those of the more-mainstream MRM vendors. Some clients cite this as one difficulty with the SAP MRM application.

• Marketing fulfillment: SAP does not offer marketing fulfillment capabilities as part of its SAP Marketing solution. However, its new reseller partnership with Open Text will bring it some capabilities in this area. With the Open Text announcement, SAP customers have the ability to set up and manage marketing assets, including some fulfillment and localization capabilities. However, Open Text is more of a DAM company and does not have as robust marketing fulfillment capabilities for procurement, print and channel management, and print on-demand. As the market matures and client requirements for marketing fulfillment as part of MRM increase, SAP will have to build or buy more capabilities in this area.

• On demand: SAP has plans to release an MRM solution as part of its on-demand CRM solution at the end of 2011. Clients seeking an on-demand MRM solution immediately should consider alternatives. SAP does provide collaboration capabilities on demand via SAP StreamWork, and some MRM functionality is available in its SAP Business ByDesign solution.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The main reasons that references for other vendors cite for not selecting SAP were that the MRM solution did not meet their own requirements and pricing (total cost of ownership).

SAS is a Visionary for its strong vision in planning, performance management and optimization capabilities. Companies looking for strong analytical MRM capabilities for planning, measurement and optimization, particularly with integration to campaign planning and execution, should consider SAS. Companies also considering marketing asset management capabilities should consider SAS's partner Assetlink. Those considering marketing fulfillment should consider SAS's partner Saepio as part of their integrated solution.

• Overall viability: SAS is a large, privately owned company with approximately $2.3 billion in revenue in 2009. Its marketing and MRM revenue continue to grow. SAS added more than 40 new customers using MRM functionality during 2010, with more than 25 cross-sells for MRM to existing clients.

• Marketing performance management and optimization: SAS continues to be the visionary in this area. SAS's strength in the MRM market is a marketing performance management solution that ties together planning, budgeting, execution and optimization processes using the SAS platform and portal. SAS's solution features analytical competencies that are flexible enough to support top-down or bottom-up marketing planning based on analysis and optimization. SAS supports advanced analytical capabilities for scenario planning, competitive and market analysis, point-and-click data mining, resource optimization, marketing mix optimization, and media planning/optimization for pricing, promotion and placement. It also built a solution for social media analytics. SAS does provide capabilities for project management, activity and task-oriented calendars, workflow for reviews and approvals, DAM and a marketing content portal for access to marketing content.

• R&D investment: Key themes for its Customer Intelligence suite for its 5.4 version release, due in February 2011, will focus on usability, real time and MRM integration. This release will rewrite Assetlink/third-party workflow integration, full integration with social media analytics, enhanced workflow and improved planning capacity. Plans for Customer Intelligence version 6 (due mid-2012) include a new single Web UI for the product suite, new integrated Distributed Marketing for local marketers to collaborate with central marketing and new Web-based SAS Workflow Studio for collaborative marketing program-level process creation and maintenance and an improved marketing calendar.

• Deployment options: The solution is available on-premises, hosted (via SAS and partners) and hybrid (mixed/remote hosting). It does not provide a multitenant SaaS alternative for core MRM competencies to date. SAS Marketing Mix Advisor is only available via hosting. Social Media Analytics is available as SaaS only.

• Software partners: SAS partners with Assetlink for customers seeking more-robust MRM capabilities in the areas of creative production management, marketing asset management and marketing fulfillment. It has developed technical integrations to the Assetlink solution. SAS also partners with Saepio Technologies for marketing asset management and fulfillment capabilities. Gartner expects SAS to make an acquisition to gain MRM capabilities in these areas within the next year.

• Customer experience: References reported good satisfaction levels with functionality for planning, calendaring, budgeting and production management. Some of these references were using the Assetlink solution for at least part of the MRM functionality. References also reported overall being reasonably satisfied with ease of use, performance and scalability, account management, the value of the solution relative to costs and ongoing R&D investment.

• Creative workflows: Although SAS continues to improve its workflow capabilities for reviews and approvals, they are not comparable to solutions that support pure, creative production management for creative advertising or brand and product managers. Clients looking for creative production management should carefully assess whether SAS meets their requirements, and should consider alternative vendors, including SAS's partner Assetlink. SAS is leveraging its Workflow Studio to create more capabilities in this area. There is also the potential that SAS will make an acquisition in this area, but it could also build internally.

• Marketing fulfillment: SAS offers limited capabilities for marketing fulfillment around its marketing content portal, with 24/7 access to marketing assets, content and collateral. It also supports dynamic offer generation. It relies on partner solutions for procurement, brand guidelines, collateral localization and customization templates, and print-on-demand capabilities. Clients should consider SAS's partners (such as Saepio Technologies) for more-comprehensive and integrated fulfillment capabilities.

• Product integration: SAS's MRM capabilities sit across multiple SAS products, partner solutions and delivery models. This can be a challenge for integration. Although the SAS 9 platform provides a robust architecture for integration, and technical integration has been developed with Assetlink and Saepio Technologies solutions, clients should carefully evaluate integration between the products, partners and deployment models, seeking references using the same combinations.

• No SaaS MRM solution: Although SAS offers social media analytics in a SaaS model, it does not provide its MRM capabilities in a multitenant, SaaS option.

• Visibility of MRM solutions: SAS needs to increase its visibility as an MRM provider, increase adoption of solutions in new accounts beyond the database marketing department, and improve its reference base using MRM-specific solutions and capabilities.

• Prospect/customer feedback: The main reasons references from other vendors cited for not selecting SAS were that the company's MRM solution did not meet their requirements, pricing (total cost of ownership), it was not viewed as a strategic partner for MRM and the vendor did not demonstrate an understanding of business needs. Pricing remains one area where customers are least satisfied, and the solution is viewed as expensive. Some clients cited issues with Assetlink not being integrated with other SAS modules (e.g., campaign and marketing optimization), which per SAS's road map, is being enhanced in 2011. SAS currently has integration between Assetlink and its campaign management application, but it is not fully Web services-based. This is something that SAS will need to address for the partnership to become successful.

Unica is a Leader in MRM for its broad solution and growing traction with its on-premises and on-demand MRM solutions. Consider Unica for its planning, budgeting and production management capabilities, particularly if your MRM requirements include integration to campaign management, and for its on-demand production management capabilities. In 4Q10, IBM acquired Unica.

• Growth and accelerated investment: Unica returned to growth in 2010, reporting 11% overall growth and $84.7 million in the first three quarters of its fiscal year. It did not report the full fiscal year due to the IBM acquisition. It reports 27% growth in Marketing Operations customers, and new MRM Enterprise customers were up 77% from a year ago. Approximately 35% of its new campaign management deals include MRM capabilities. Unica also accelerated investment in both its on-premises and on-demand MRM solutions, with three significant releases for Unica Marketing Operations Enterprise (v.8.1, v.8.1.1 and v.8.2) and two releases for Marketing Operations OnDemand (r.36 and r.37).

• Marketing operations R&D: Unica made many improvements across its MRM suite in 2010. Key investments included enhanced attachment markup capabilities; budgeting what-if scenarios; automated thumbnail support for images; extended support for HTML, BMP, GIF, JPH and PNG; URLs for asset management; budgeting versioning and comparison; wizard-based attribution creation; and enhanced rule-driven forms. Plans for 2011 include enhancements to workflow management, automated financial planning and marketing performance management (e.g., statistically inferred response attribution). Improved usability and the customer experience will remain a focus for investments.

• Marketing Operations OnDemand R&D: Key investments included project copy into event calendar, plan- and program-level reporting, task reporting across review areas and projects, and shared user reports for distribution. Future investments will focus on simplification and ease of use. The future road map includes the ability to auto-generate and display thumbnails, facilitating ongoing security changes with user access, budgeting improvements and continued improvements in reporting. Unica plans to embed capabilities from Marketing Operations OnDemand in its Interactive Marketing Worflow and OnDemand solution for interactive marketing.

• Deployment options: Unica offers Unica Marketing Operations Enterprise as an on-premises solution and as a hosted solution through third-party vendors (Accenture, Acxiom and Epsilon). Unica Marketing Operations OnDemand is its on-demand solution.

• Customer experience: Clients report reasonably good satisfaction with Unica's MRM functionality. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, the value of the solution in terms of cost, ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments.

• Innovation: Although Unica has invested heavily in its MRM solutions, most of its investments have focused on closing the gap with other leaders and visionaries in the market. There are a few areas of innovation around attribution analysis and budgeting scenarios, but other vendors are beginning to innovate a second generation of MRM capabilities that are broader and more strategic. Unica will have to innovate in this space to maintain its leadership position.

• Client confusion and partner concern: Although IBM has publicly stated that it is fully committed to launching this important new effort in providing solutions to marketing organizations, the acquisition has generated some questions regarding the future direction of Unica's solutions, particularly its OnDemand MRM solution acquired from MarketingCentral. Marketing service providers and system integrators clearly view IBM as a threat to their long-term service partnership with Unica.

• Marketing fulfillment: Unica does not offer a marketing fulfillment solution. It has a partnership with Saepio for collateral customization and localized marketing capabilities. To date, Unica and Saepio have one joint customer. As requirements for marketing fulfillment as part of an MRM or brand management solution increase, Unica should consider building or buying in this area.

• Marketing performance management, reporting and analytics: Many clients have expressed concerns about the reporting capabilities in both the on-premises and on-demand solutions, citing their analytical limitations as major concerns of the solutions. Unica's investment in and plan for marketing performance management is beginning to deliver more-useful and usable analytical tools for MRM clients, such as the statistically inferred response attribution (which has a patent pending) and its what-if budgeting tool for spending scenarios. However, these tools remain focused on specific uses in the application, rather than a broader framework for role-based dashboards and CMO-level intelligence. With the IBM acquisition, Unica has the opportunity to leverage IBM's prior acquisition of SPSS and Cognos to improve in this area.

• Customer/prospect feedback: The main reasons cited by the references of other vendors for not selecting Unica were that its MRM solution did not meet their requirements, the vendor did not demonstrate an understanding of business needs and the solution lacked robust MRM functionality. Client concerns focus on the need for more-flexible modification of processes, increased approval processes, improved financial tracking, slow response to enhancement requests and concern over future investment in the product. Some clients have reported more than 50% customization of the solution.

Vyre, based in the U.K., is a Niche Player for its main focus on automating the digital supply chain, from production to fulfillment. U.K.-based clients interested in production management, asset management and fulfillment should consider Vyre.

• Growth and positioning: Vyre reports around 7% growth from 2009 to 2010. Most of its revenue is MRM-related. Gartner estimates revenue for 2010 between $6 million and $8 million. Vyre added 11 new MRM customers in 2010. It was offered, and received, 1 million GBK in investment funding from Octopus Capital. Vyre will be repositioning itself as an MRM vendor and will focus on the marketing buying center. In the mature and crowded content management market, where it can be tough for a small vendor to compete, this new positioning is a smart move, as it will focus the company on the markets best-suited for its solution and drive development into more areas of marketing differentiation.

• Broadening MRM vision and capabilities: Vyre has broadened its MRM vision beyond the digital supply chain, from production to fulfillment, to include planning, budgeting and analytical capabilities. Its new planning and budgeting capabilities include financial management (expected versus actual costs), reviews and approvals for budgets/costs, requests for information and RFPs, and supplier management and collaboration. Measurement capabilities include reporting, dashboards with KPIs, and resource planning and optimization for campaigns and projects. It also improved its core areas of MRM, production management (activity and task management), marketing asset management (enterprise search and version control; federated search) and marketing fulfillment (print production management, inventory/point of sale management).

• Development of prepackaged solution: Vyre is taking its expertise and intellectual capital from its custom-made solutions and is developing a prepackaged MRM solution that would require only 15% to 20% customization. It will be releasing out-of-the-box modules during 2011. It released its first prepackaged module, Brand Asset Management, in 4Q10. In 2011, it plans to release Creative Workflow (Q1), Reporting (Q2), Artwork Builder (Q2) and Campaign Management (Q3). The development of a prepackaged solution that is more scalable and easy to upgrade will improve its long-term success in the market.

• Deployment options: Vyre offers its custom-made MRM solutions as a license or as a SaaS option for its Unify platform. Vyre's new prepackaged MRM solution is based on the SaaS model.

• Customer experience: References report some of the highest satisfaction levels with Vyre's MRM capabilities. References also reported being satisfied with ease of use, ease of installation, availability of prepackaged functionality, performance and scalability, account management, pricing, customer service and support, professional services, the value of the solution in terms of cost, the ability to meet current and future requirements, and R&D investments. Strengths cited by clients include scalability to grow the solution and customize it to fit their requirements.

• Geographical coverage: Most of Vyre's MRM customers are based in the U.K., where its professional services and implementation capabilities are strong. Companies outside the U.K. should evaluate Vyre's capabilities to provide service and ongoing support.

• Financial management: Vyre's planning and budgeting solutions are new and not yet validated in the market. Carefully evaluate your requirements against Vyre's capabilities and road map in this area. Seek references who are using these capabilities.

• Software-to-services ratio: Most of Vyre's revenue comes from services, not from software, reflecting the current focus on custom-made implementations and customized solutions. The current ratio is 53% software to 47% services. As the MRM market matures, clients are seeking more prepackaged solutions, and first-generation buyers are looking to replace custom solutions with prepackaged ones. Vyre's development of an out-of-the-box solution is timely. It will need to continue to invest in prepackaged solutions and encourage its clients to select these in order to remain a market contender. Some clients have noted issues with professional service support.

• Competition: Vyre will be increasingly challenged in its European markets as the EMM vendors, such as Aprimo, Assetlink and Unica, develop a strong MRM client base in Europe, and larger vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, mature their MRM interfaces and functionality. It can be difficult for a European vendor to expand into North America without a physical presence. Vyre will face increasing competition from companies like BrandMaker and Orbis Global, which are establishing a presence in North America.

• Small vendor: Vyre is a small vendor, with less than $10 million in revenue, and it is susceptible to strong fluctuations in the market. As it gains traction in Europe and develops more prepackaged MRM solutions, it could be an attractive acquisition target for companies wanting to augment their asset management capabilities or expand into Europe. Clients should carefully weigh the risks of doing business with a small vendor versus the business benefits they can gain from using its software.