$11bn - the cost of getting to know your customers

CRM software has made international players out of relative newcomers including Salesforce.com and tempted old players such as Microsoft into the arena; according to analysts, it's one market that's going to get even bigger.

Analyst house IDC believes the CRM applications market will grow at a rate of nearly nine per cent until 2008 - by which time, it will be worth around $11bn.

The current market leader in the CRM field, according to IDC, is Siebel, with SAP as a solid second place.

The CRM analytics market is also expanding - growing over 12 per cent to $909m last year with analytics now becoming an integral part of companies' CRM plans.

However, to keep the customer relationship management behemoth ticking over, IDC says that maintaining return on investment is more than a buzzword - it's a necessity, as technology buyers shave shifted from investing in CRM needing to justify the expense to really pushing for tangible ROI.