Gartner's MRM Magic Quadrant Predicts Growth, Acquisitions, and a Global Boost

By Courtney Garcia Feb 22, 2012

After hitting on Business Intelligence, IaaS and Web Content Management, Gartner next takes on Marketing Resource Management with its Magic Quadrant series. Spotlighting vendors who are Leaders, Niche Players, and Visionaries, the latest edition underscores companies with the best ability take advantage of their resources, solidify a vision and show off their assets. Here’s some insight on the current market along with a breakdown of those running the show.

The State O’ Things

In terms of overall environment, Gartner's latest report shows Marketing Resource Management (MRM) is a quickly developing area of expertise, with more encompassing business requirements, demand for next-generation functionality and widening global terrain. Gartner defines MRM as “a set of processes and capabilities designed to enhance a company's ability to orchestrate and optimize internal and external marketing resources.” The focus of MRM is segmented into five arenas by the group, specifically: strategic planning and financial management; creative production management; digital asset, content and knowledge management; marketing fulfillment; and MRM analytics.

While already heavy in traction throughout Europe, 2011 saw a distinct rise in MRM investments in North America, and the piquing of interest in Asia/Pacific and Latin American regions. On top of that, a majority of vendors increased overall revenue, and, across midsize to large companies, implementation was up 26%. There was a good mix between those who executed strategies with internal staff as opposed to professional services through a vendor, and the majority took six months or less to execute their initiatives.

Gartner predicts the next stage of MRM expansion will manifest three ways:

Global expansion
Increase in number of users within a region
Broadening MRM capabilities across the five areas of MRM competency

Further, with smaller vendors, Gartner has forecast the field is ripe for acquisitions, and, particularly with growing investment opportunities and the need for a high level of sophistication, many are likely on the horizon. The research study identifies several large players anticipated to enter the market including Adobe, EMC, HP, Microsoft and Xerox.

One Step Ahead: A Look at the Leaders

To be a leader in this field, obviously you must be hot stuff. “Leaders,” according to Gartner, demonstrate exemplary performance, deliver breadth and depth of integrated functionality, and extend global implementations across marketing organizations. Additionally, leaders successfully articulate business propositions that resonate with buyers.

Here are the chosen ones.

IBM

Why’s it a leader? Broad MRM solution and growing traction, planning, budgeting and production management capabilities

Strengths: IBM brought in US$ 106.9 billion in revenue in 2011, and reported 21.7% growth for its Enterprise Marketing Management group from 2010 to 2011. It also significantly extended its reach into new markets, and advanced a system of workflow capabilities, including life cycle management, rule-based routing of department approvals, Adobe markup enhancements and localization provided for nine new languages. Not stopping there, this year, IBM has planned for more sophisticated portals, mobile MRM and visual management, along with the addition of vertical capabilities to retail and CPG clients enabled by its acquisition of DemandTec. Across the board, the global conglomerate has expanded and improved upon its vision.

Cautions: By directing most attention towards on-premise services, IBM has put SaaS on the backburner, and some clients have taken notice and are looking to alternative solutions. The likely outcome? SaaS shifts to the the IBM cloud, and clients either adapt or go elsewhere. On another note, IBM lacks extensive development in marketing fulfillment and functionality, two significant segments of the MRM core. Gartner suggests capitalizing on its recent partnership with Saepio Technologies for collateral customization and localized marketing capabilities, and upping capacity for the life of a production. Lastly, IBM needs to pull in some better B2B clients if it wants to compete in the long run.