Championship Teams Emerge From CRM Madness Final Four

Last Thursday, the Final Four CRMs advanced in our CRM Madness Tournament. The winners were determined by a combined score, weighted 50/50 by the number of votes they received in the round and the number of monthly Google searches for their company/product.

Based off of those factors, we whittled down the Elite Eight to just four remaining CRMs, and, as a result, the matchups over the weekend were:

• Pega CRM vs. vtiger CRM
• SugarCRM vs. Salesforce

We decided to use Google searches as a factor in the tournament because it speaks to the overall popularity and brand recognition of the CRM products. One of the questions software buyers frequently ask us when shopping for a CRM solution is, “Which are the top solutions?” And our typical answer is that the best solution for you really depends on your company’s specific needs. However, we can provide a list of some of the most popular choices on the market based on a number of publicly-available stats (including Google searches and the others that we’ve been using throughout this contest). But perhaps the most meaningful statistic to determine a “top” CRM is whether a solution comes highly recommended by its users (which is why votes are such an important aspect of the contest).

Ultimately, all of the Elite Eight teams that advanced had significantly more monthly Google searches than their competitors, and the only underdogs to out-vote their competitors were Goldmine and Salesboom. However, their slight edge in votes was not enough to unseat their corresponding rivals— Salesforce and Pegasystems.  Among the Elite Eight, Sugar CRM, vtiger, and SAP had the most votes with 349, 187, and 113 respectively.

The National Championship Contenders

Over the weekend, the remaining four CRMs tallied a record number of votes compared to the previous four rounds: 1737 votes! That brings the grand total to more than 4,800 votes over the course of the competition thus far.

Here’s how they each fared:

• Pegasystems: 957 votes
• SugarCRM: 450 votes
• vtiger: 300 votes
• Salesforce.com: 30 votes

Originally, our plan was to advance the teams based on 50% company revenue and 50% number of votes. However, only two companies— Pegasystems and Salesforce.com— publicly release their revenue data. Despite this lack of comparable data, SugarCRM beat out Salesforce by more than 30x the number of votes, and Pega beat out vtiger by more than 3x the number of votes, making them both the clear winners of their matchups.

As such, our final two contenders are… (drumroll please)…

Sugar CRM vs. Pegasystems

Curious to see how these two systems compare? Check out our side-by-side CRM comparison chart and decide for yourself!

You can vote for one of these two contenders today through Wednesday, April 4^th at http://crmmadness.capterra.com.  The overall champion will be 100% determined by how many votes they receive between now and Wednesday at midnight, so it’s anybody’s game!

Stay tuned for my final post this Thursday, when we will announce the overall winner of the 2012 CRM Madness Tournament!