When I published the Market Overview: Real-Time Interaction Management back in May, I highlighted more than 100 vendors that provide real-time interaction management (RTIM) solutions or solution components.  I outlined in that report how enterprise marketing technology vendors address – to varying degrees – all five RTIM requirements: customer recognition, contextual understanding, decision arbitration, offer orchestration, and measurement and optimization. My Brief: Demystifying Real-Time Interaction Management provides further details and defines RTIM as enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer life cycle via preferred customer touchpoints.

I’m now pleased to announce the publication of The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q3 2015, which provides a detailed evaluation of eleven enterprise marketing technology vendors in terms of their RTIM solution capabilities. This 35-criteria evaluation includes a diverse group of vendors that address a broad range of RTIM capabilities: Adobe, Experian, IBM, Infor, Oracle, Pegasystems, Pitney Bowes, Salesforce, SAS Institute, SmartFocus, and Teradata.

Pegasystems and Teradata distinguish themselves as RTIM leaders for their marketer-focused analytics AND cross-channel orchestration. Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce are strong performers that claim the largest RTIM market presence, and the majority of their customers address digital channels via web personalization and dynamic email content. Rounding out the strong performers, SAS Institute provides leading predictive analytics with its real-time decision management solution; the Experian Marketing Suite consists of identity, intelligence, and interactions management; and the SmartFocus Message Cloud applies an algorithmic approach to interactive messaging. Pitney Bowes and Infor are in the contenders category – with both providing strong analytics and decision engine capabilities, but lacking the marketer focus of the other players.

The Forrester Wave™ methodology provides comparisons of vendors’ products and services to help you optimize vendor selection.  In addition to the The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q3 2015 report itself, I encourage you to download the related spreadsheet, which provides details on the 35 criteria, vendor capabilities and scores, and Forrester’s weightings for RTIM requirements. With this interactive tool, you will be able to align our evaluation with your own priorities.

As always, feel free to send me an email or set up an inquiry to discuss RTIM and/or the enterprise marketing technology landscape. If you are considering enterprise marketing software investments and want to discuss priorities, challenges, or vendor capabilities, we’re here to help.