CRM Market Heats Up

As demand for ERP applications slows and customers look for integrated back- and front office-apps, vendors are rushing to add CRM products or enhance the CRM products they already sell. Dun & Bradstreet Thursday said it would acquire privately held small-business sales-software vendor iMarket Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Dun & Bradstreet was already selling iMarket's small-business portal, customer contact management software, and sales lead management databases to its small business customers prior to purchasing iMarket. Dun & Bradstreet execs say they'll look for other ways to integrate iMarket products into Dun & Bradstreet's big-business CRM products.

Earlier this week, The Sage Group, a British back-office software vendor that focuses on the mid-market, said it's buying U.S.-based CRM vendor, Interact Commerce, for $260 million in cash.

At the same time, software titans like Oracle, SAP, and PeopleSoft, continue to develop their integrated ERP and CRM lines; and CRM specialist Siebel is readying product updates.