My question is related to the one was that already asked here about
CRM applications.

However, I am interested in web-based products (Application
Service Provider model) that cover the sales management field.

Can you list top companies/products that together cover about 95% of
THIS market and their market shares in percents and in dollars, web
links, etc.
(Again, I mean not the general CRM/enterprise market but the market
for web-based sales management tools)

Also, can you give a list of online resources devoted to THIS
business.

Also, it would be interesting to know potential players of THIS market
who did not release their products yet but are expected to capture a
substantial market share in the future.

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Clarification of Question by bikestain-ga on 11 Jul 2002 16:14 PDT

Forgot to mention that along with information about market shares, the
overall market growth rate and the market forecast for the nearest
future will be very useful.

You might want to distinguish whether you want companys with a 'web
interface' or companys that are on an ASP model. ASP implys that
someone is 'hosting' your application. You are basically paying for
the application to be available without having to care where or how it
is running. A good way of thinking about ASP model is to consider what
you are getting as a service as opposed to a product.  Having a web
interface, only implys that you can interact with the application
through a web-based interface. Having worked for a CRM company as a
software developer for a few years, I can tell you there are many
players in the market. Also, there is a very wide variance as what
companies percieve as 'CRM'. Just the segment that deals with
phone-based (call center software as opposed to say e-mail, web, etc,
correspondance) contact is a big space. Often CRM is something
hand-roled or bolted on after a company already has a major investment
in a system such as SAP, Vantive, or Clarify (meaning they are
operating in tight technology/interoperability constraints).
Check out this link for some more info on various CRM companys.
http://www.crmdaily.com

puravida77-ga, good comment.

Yes, I am interested in BROWSER-based applications provided in an ASP
model, which implicates less user training cost and no IT support
headaches.
As I mentioned above I am interested in Sales management tools, in
other words sales force automation or similar to that.

Another clarification may be CRM vs SFA.  From your comments, you are
looking for a salesforce automation tool versus CRM, or customer
relationship management.  Ask 10 people to define CRM and you will
probably get 9 different answers.  I can give you some basic
information without digging too deep, primarily from experience.

The first was UpShot.com.  Privately held, UpShot was founded in 1996
and claims to be the first to offer a web-based CRM solution. They
offer an SFA module for their ASP CRM application, so from what I can
read, they don't really fit into what you are looking fro,

There are two major players in the ASP SFA market, SalesForce.com and
Salesnet.net

SalesForce.com claims that over 4,500 companies use their services
including USA Today, First Union Bank, and Siemens. Being private,
their financial figures are not available.

SalesNet.com was an innovator in an ASP/Web based SFA application. 
They were one of the first to successfuly implement an ASP/Web SFA
product. They are a privately held company as well, so their financial
numbers are not specifcally released,however, they did announce an
"8,000% increase" in sales from 2000 to 2001. They have some very big
names such as American Express, British Telecom, Staples and Sovereign
Bank. They were rated "Best Subscription SFA Solution" by
SellMoreNow.com.

A major player getting involved in the web based SFA market is Oracle
with OracleSalesOnline.com.  Interesting thing here is that Larry
Ellison of Oracle is an investor of SalesForce.com

One to watch will be the 400 pound gorilla, Microsoft.  With their
aquisition of Great Plains Software, they are jumping head first into
the CRM world.  I recently attended a CRM show in Boston and MSFT was
going 100% with their presence at the show with an elaborate booth
(HUGE!!!) and demos.  It remains to be seen if they jump into a served
model, but if there is money to be made, you can almost bet they will,
especially with their .NET initiative.

Hope this helps or at least gets a researcher in the right direction
for more specific answers to your questions.

Good luck!

THV

tar_heel_v-ga,
Thank you for the comment.
I understand that CRM is a very generic term. That's why I clarified
from the very beginning that I am interested in Sales management.

BTW, why do you think Upshot.com does not fit to the definition of
what I am looking for? For me, they look pretty much similar to
Saleforce.com.
Also, Upshot.com have one US patent application that tends to cover
just every aspect of an online SFA tool. So, if this patent
application will get approved, they can easily sue Salesforce and
others.

Puravida..

You are 100% correct in UpShot and I was mistaken in my inital look. 
From their index page, it appeared to be a CRM application with SFA
being a part of that.  From further research, it appears I was way off
base.  I was not at all familiar with UpShot and I have had some
experiences with SalesForce.com and SalesNet.com (not as a user, but
as an investigator), so from your comment, I researched their patent
request.  Searching at the US Patent office website, I found a patent
that was issued for synchronizing data with a handheld, which seems to
be a very strong path they (UpShot) are following.  Very cursory look.
 Thanks for correcting me.  UpShot is a serious player in the web
based SFA market

Take a look at http://www.hosted-crm.info for an extensive side-by-side feature
comparison of the top hosted CRM services.