Market Definitions Explained in CRM Software Terms
Several of the more salient factors which separate customer markets from a Customer Relationship Management software perspective are identified below.

	Small Business Market	Middle Market	Enterprise Market
Revenues:	$5 million (M) to $100M	$100M to $1B	Over $1B
Employees:	Less than 100	101 to 500	Over 500
CRM user count:	10 to 50	51 to 500	Over 500
IT staffing:	One or a few; often a single person with multiple responsibilities	Small department of several people; often lacks executive sponsorship and long term strategy	Full IT line of business staffing; generally with executive sponsorship and CIO with board participation
IT skills:	Very modest; often lacks formal training	Generalist skills; generally lacks specialty skills	A portfolio of broad and specific skills
Propensity to outsource:	Very high. Routinely use outsourcing for HR software, payroll processing and administrative functions. Very willing to outsource CRM information systems management.	High. The SaaS concept is nothing new or novel for this group.  SaaS is viewed as an extension of traditional outsourcing services. SaaS generally doesn't replace an internal IT department, but is applied to specific applications, niche tasks or competencies.	Medium to high. While this market segment doesn't use outsourcing with the same frequency of SMB or middle market companies, it has shown an unexpectedly high propensity to leverage SaaS business applications.
Primary SaaS objectives:	Eliminate a seemingly complex function, reduce the need to have to hire IT resources to administer networks and business applications, reduce capital expenditures for hardware and software and increase overall information systems reliability.	Leverage higher-end CRM software than can be afforded via procurement and offload business applications management to dedicated specialists so that generally overwhelmed internal staff can focus on more pressing priorities.	Offload business applications management to dedicated specialists in order to achieve better SLAs (service level agreements), superior uptime and improved user experience; Relieve internal IT staff to focus on core competencies and strategic tasks.
SaaS primary buy criteria:	Ease of use, acquisition cost (subscription cost) and cost avoidance. This customer segment greatly values the pay as you go software subscription model.	Software capabilities, functionality, reporting, SLA (Service Level Agreement), guaranteed uptime and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).	Software breadth (increased number of modules or software scope), software depth, SLA, guaranteed uptime, information security and TCO.
Customization preferences:	More willing to accept a less customized or generic CRM solution, although they view user-configured customization as a plus.	These companies expect a high degree of integration and customization to their specific requirements. The majority expect the SaaS software company to customize their hosted application.	These companies also expect a high degree of integration and customization to their requirements and generally have technology preferences - such as SOA (service oriented architecture), XML web services, etc..

Business Software Market Segments

Software manufacturers, Value Added Resellers (VARs), consulting organizations, systems integrators, analysts and media organizations all have varying terms and definitions for describing either the same or slightly overlapping business market segments. We've put some definition and understanding to the three most commonly used market segment tiers.

• SME or SMB. SME (small and medium enterprises) and SMB (small or medium sized businesses) are often used interchangeably. SME is more of an internationally used term (and is the official market term for global organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, European Union (EU) and other internationally focused organizations). While different EU member countries have different market size definitions, the EU is moving forward in creating a standard market segmentation definitions. The EU is now defining 'Small' companies as those with fewer than 50 employees and 'Medium' companies as those with fewer than 250 employees. In North America, the terms SME and SMB are used interchangeably and with near equal frequency. However, North American definitions for Small and Medium sized business are slightly larger than in the EU. By North American terms, a small business has less than 100 employees and a medium sized business is generally defined as having fewer than 500 staff. The term SOHO (small home / home office) is also commonly used in North America to describe companies less than 10 staff.
• Mid-Market, Middle Market or Mid-Range. This market segment category is selectively used depending upon the industry. While some markets and industries simply categorize themselves into SME/SMB and Enterprise, several other industries - including the business software industry - recognize the significant customer differences between small business and big business and therefore use this in-between category. From a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software perspective, there are several profound differences (e.g. software scope, software functionality, software utilization, system integration, customization, support, etc.) between 'small' and 'medium' customer segments so the term 'middle market' is frequently used (and the SME or SMB terms are frequently changed to just 'Small Business').
• Fortune 1000, Fortune 2000 or Enterprise. The terms to describe 'big' businesses have evolved as big businesses keep getting bigger. Several years ago, the term 'Fortune 1000' was frequently cited. As those companies grew, the term 'Fortune 2000' became commonly used as that next 1000 companies were unquestionably businesses beyond the middle market category. As big business growth has continued unabated, the term 'enterprise' has become a de facto standard for many in the CRM software industry and other technology industries.

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