IDC: The Western European market for analytic applications continues to present significant growth opportunities for software vendors.The market is forecast to reach €1.9 billion by 2010, representing a 2005–2010 CAGR of 10.3%.

The study analyzes the three segments of the analytic applications market — BPM/financial analytics, CRM analytics, and SCM/operations analytics. All analytic applications market segments will show solid growth over the forecast period, but the BPM/financial segment is forecast to experience the highest growth, driven by companies' demand for an improved and more current strategic understanding of their core functions, compliance requirements, and a need to make more frequent and flexible adjustments to financial plans.

SCM/operations analytics should benefit from organizations' continued need to optimize their internal processes and extended supply chains in an effort to manage costs and risk.

Having invested heavily in operational CRM applications, Western European organizations are now trying to unlock valuable data in these systems to improve their marketing and sales intelligence by deploying CRM analytics.

Suites, platforms, and partnerships are key for success in the European analytic applications market. Vendors that do not offer a suite of products should consider partnership strategies that offer tight integration based on a solid business intelligence framework, as internal and external processes must support information consistency now more than ever with added compliance pressures. Niche vendors will need to demonstrate above average expertise and measurable advantages over the suite vendors to win sales. Because of the increase in the number of vendors providing basic analytics, only the real niche innovators will thrive.

The IDC study Western European Analytic Applications Forecast, 2006–2010 Publ 20060425