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In terms of satisfaction trends, enterprise applications has emerged as one of the most dynamic markets. The fact that customer satisfaction is a close competitive play, has made it even more imperative for enterprise application vendors to align themselves to the changing trends to help meet and exceed CIO expectations.s

So, what are the CIO expectations? Undoubtedly, he/she wants the most reliable product with great functionality and ease of operation. Last year, pre-sales and marketing, and price and commercial were the most important factors for satisfaction after product. This is indicative of the growing maturity of Indian enterprises in terms of the adoption of enterprise applications.

As the enterprise moves further in its ERP/CRM/SCM journey, there is greater focus for the CIO on aspects like installation and post-sales service. Going by their responses, most enterprises now seem to be in the latter phase.

Customer satisfaction in the enterprise applications market seems to be a very competitive play considering theres not much variance in the satisfaction scores of the top three vendors. However, what makes Microsoft Business Solutions coming on top more interesting is the vendors relative improvement over its last years scores, which is the highest as compared to its competitors

So, vendors now know where to focus their energies most on. But are they doing so? Going by the survey result, it doesnt seem that theyre putting all their energies in the right place.

Interactions with service team and adherence to SLAs have been voiced as major concern areas on which CIOs would like their enterprise application vendors to take action on. On the other hand, pre-sales and marketing has ended up making CIOs most satisfied (with 87.5 points). Vendors need to re-visit their customer satisfaction strategy and make sure that theyre not putting their eggs in the wrong basket.

The rise of Microsoft Business Solutions has been contributed primarily by vendor understanding/domain knowledge of business (pre-sales and marketing) and clarity of pricing contract (price & commercial). This is one of the segments where all the vendors, with the exception of one (Ramco), have performed better than the industry average

The growth in the overall satisfaction level in the enterprise applications segment has seen the highest growth among all the eight segments being surveyed. Last year, enterprise applications was among the most affected by the dip in satisfaction levels. It made a revival with the overall satisfaction of enterprise application users increasing by 1.79%. In terms of vendor rankings, SAP has conceded its top position to Microsoft Business Solutions, though only by a mere 0.2 points score. But, what assumes greater significance is the relative improvement in Microsofts performance over the last year as compared to SAP. While the former grew from 81.4 points in 2007 to 86.5 points in 2008, the growth for SAP is from 84.7 points in 2007 to 86.3 points in 2008. Oracle is closer behind at 85.8 points, up from 83.9 points in 2007.

The improvement in Microsofts satisfaction scores was mainly due to CIOs high degree of satisfaction with the vendor with respect to understanding/domain knowledge of their business (pre-sales and marketing) and clarity of pricing contract (price and commercial).

The companys change in licensing policy with the intention of making it simpler seems to have paid off. Another plausible reason can be the vendors efforts at scalability and product improvements in the last 2-3 years. This apart, it also enjoys the rub off of the overall Microsoft brand. As a result, the overall brand recall is much higher.

For Oracle, overall product performance, scalability, and geographical reach to provide service are issues with its customers. On the other hand, SAP has to work harder on improving the convenience of installation/adoption, greater clarity in its pricing contracts and responsiveness to technical queries.

Enterprise applications is another segment wherein CIOs dont just demand a reliable product with good functionality, but also want the vendor to have the ability to resolve problems and be available post the implementation as well. This can be because enterprise applications generally require a long-term relationship with the vendor. While Microsoft has reasons to celebrate, a cause for concern for the company is the low satisfaction level CIOs have expressed with the security aspects of its product

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