1. G00271323
Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Campaign
Management
Published: 1 July 2015
Analyst(s): Adam Sarner, Julie Hopkins, Mike McGuire, Jennifer Polk
Multichannel campaign management vendors are aggressively adding
features to keep up with demand from digital marketers, but offerings still
vary widely in functionality and maturity levels. Marketers should focus on
campaign management's critical capabilities when evaluating the evolving
landscape.
Key Findings
■ Over the last year, competition has accelerated the pace of innovation and improvement among
multichannel campaign management (MCCM) products.
■ Marketers see the need to break down organizational silos and integrate across functions and
channels. Vendors have responded by supporting analytics and external data, a consistent user
interface (UI), and channel integration improvements to make these connections.
■ Providers in the Magic Quadrant for MCCM generally offer strong capabilities in just one or two
areas, such as multidimensional segmentation and campaign workflow. In most other areas,
functionality ranges from basic to advanced.
■ New extensions to MCCM, particularly social and mobile marketing, can improve coveted real-
time interaction between company and customer. However, most vendors have added on these
capabilities through acquisition and have not integrated them, nor do they have a track record
or complete vision in these areas.
Recommendations
■ Audit uses cases (campaign creation, execution, orchestration and measurement) against
functions (segmentation, predictive analytics, email marketing and so forth) to identify any gaps
in your own MCCM projects.
■ Consider product functions as just one factor in your purchase decision, along with product
roadmap, customer references, vendor viability and ability to integrate with other systems (such
as social marketing or ad tech). Use this research, along with the MCCM Magic Quadrant, to
see how each vendor compares.
2. What You Need to Know
Since 2014, vendors have accelerated the pace of adding capabilities to their MCCM offerings to
keep up with marketers' demands and multichannel marketing campaigns' increasing complexity.
Competition is also growing between MCCM vendors and point solutions. Functions that may have
given some vendors first-mover advantage last year may have left them on a par with competition in
2015. For example, functionality such as social marketing gave some vendors early basic social
publishing capabilities, which multichannel marketers now consider incomplete and commoditizing.
However, event-triggered marketing, real-time decisioning tools and other functions have greatly
risen in importance.
Leading vendors focus on:
■ Adding multiple external data sources and improving advanced analytics, particularly in real-
time channels
■ Integrating MCCM with other CRM, marketing and analytics applications
■ Increasing support for more channels, particularly mobile
Some vendors have further improved their offerings by adding industry-specific functions,
expanding their capabilities and client base geographically, and/or appealing to both business-to-
consumer (B2C) and B2B companies. Some vendors have improved by extending their native
functionality either through acquisition or organic product investments. Others are expanding their
partner ecosystem. Vendors' capacities, maturity, roadmaps and so forth can affect everything from
your total cost of ownership to the channels you support, to the time and complexity of your
implementation.
If you are extending MCCM capabilities beyond what you already have with your current vendor:
■ Re-evaluate your current vendor, even if you talked to the vendor six months ago — its offerings
may have changed, and in some cases, the vendor may have shifted its roadmap.
■ Talk to Gartner and the vendor's references about any new capabilities. In some cases (such as
mobile marketing), few customers are actually using the new functions. This can save you from
taking on an immature solution that enables too few processes, or limited expertise from the
vendor, for building a mobile foundation.
If you're evaluating MCCM vendors for the first time or need a major overhaul:
■ Audit use cases (campaign creation, execution, orchestration and measurement) against
functions (such as segmentation and email marketing) to see where to start or where you might
have gaps in your own MCCM strategy.
■ Use the Magic Quadrant for MCCM for comparing each vendor, and evaluate vendors' future
roadmaps to ensure they are keeping pace with your long-term strategy and the market
direction itself.
Page 2 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
3. Analysis
Critical Capabilities Use-Case Graphics
Figure 1. Vendors' Product Scores for Campaign Creation Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 3 of 22
4. Figure 2. Vendors' Product Scores for Campaign Orchestration Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
Page 4 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
5. Figure 3. Vendors' Product Scores for Campaign Execution Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 5 of 22
6. Figure 4. Vendors' Product Scores for Campaign Measurement Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
Page 6 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
7. Vendors
Adobe
Adobe Campaign, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, offers one of the most complete sets of MCCM
functions. Consequently, the product scores high overall in all four use cases, including campaign
creation, where Adobe has traditional strength. We rated this product Outstanding in content
marketing, and Excellent on many capabilities, including campaign workflow, multidimensional
segmentation, email marketing, mobile marketing and ad management. Adobe Campaign moved
from Outstanding to Excellent in social marketing against more active competitors, and it scored
Good on the rest. Like other vendors in this market, Adobe will continue to integrate multiple
products as part of its unified marketing cloud vision. It made particular progress with Adobe
Analytics, Experience Manager, Target and Adobe Marketing Cloud Core Services in 2014. Adobe
Campaign targets the retail, media, publishing, financial services, travel and high-tech industries.
Consider Adobe for multichannel marketing capabilities for both online and offline channels.
AgilOne
AgilOne offers basic MCCM, with Fair ratings in all use cases — it does best in campaign creation
and orchestration. AgilOne excels in predictive analytics, in which it receives an Excellent rating. It
has gaps in content marketing and social marketing (Poor ratings), and weaknesses in campaign
workflow, real-time decisioning, ad management and mobile marketing (Fair ratings). Consider
AgilOne if you are in the retail, B2B, media and education industries, and if you want improved
analytics for better segmentation and targeting.
Experian
Experian's Marketing Suite supports core MCCM functions, with Excellent ratings in
multidimensional segmentation and email marketing. Good ratings in predictive analytics, event
triggering and real-time decisioning speak to Experian's data heritage. However, the Marketing Suite
UI could use modernization (it's on the roadmap for 2015), and support for other capabilities lags
behind some competitors (for example, content marketing, ad management and social marketing).
Consider Experian for cross-channel campaign management if you are a B2C company in the
financial services, retail or media industries, and if you want to exploit first- and third-party data to
better identify and understand customers.
IBM
IBM Marketing Solutions, available as software-as-a-service or as on-premises offerings, score well
in all use cases. IBM offers a nearly complete portfolio of MCCM functions, with Excellent scores in
multidimensional segmentation, campaign workflow, predictive analytics, real-time decisioning and
mobile marketing. It also provides email capabilities, event triggering, integrated mobile and Web
notification, and push messaging. This portfolio will appeal to digital marketers in almost any
industry who need to automate campaigns across multiple channels, both online and off.
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 7 of 22
8. Infor
Infor's Customer Interaction Hub supports all four use cases reasonably well, although it does best
in campaign creation and orchestration. Infor has assembled a nearly complete portfolio of
functions — especially in terms of multidimensional segmentation, campaign workflow and real-time
decisioning. Ad management and content marketing remain gaps. Infor's product will appeal to
sophisticated marketers who want more support for real-time and event-based marketing, where
Infor's analytics sophistication can really help. Consider Infor if you are a large company in financial
services, telecommunications, healthcare, retail, consumer manufacturing or high-tech.
Marketo
Marketo's MCCM offering supports all use cases adequately. The company offers at least some
support for all capabilities (ad management and predictive analytics receive Fair scores). Marketo
offers Excellent email marketing solutions. It has used this strength in B2B lead management
processes to expand into message-related areas, such as event triggering and real-time
decisioning. Marketo's product provides all the MCCM basics and will particularly appeal to
companies that need support for B2B event-based marketing, as well as B2C companies targeting
digital channels.
Microsoft
Microsoft Dynamics Marketing supports all use cases adequately. The company receives Good
scores for its capabilities, except for content marketing and ad management, which receive Fair
marks. Microsoft recently added support for email and mobile messaging and for webinars.
Microsoft will appeal to companies that already use Microsoft applications (such as for sales and
service) and that want to integrate core campaign management.
Oracle
Oracle's Marketing Cloud offers one of the strongest, most consistent sets of functions in the
MCCM market. It scores high on all use cases (campaign creation and measurement are the
strongest scenarios). In every capability, the product scores at least a Good rating, while some are
Excellent (multidimensional segmentation, campaign workflow and content marketing), and it
receives Outstanding marks for email marketing. In 2014, Oracle added more reporting and support
for external data. Oracle Eloqua is geared for B2B marketing for sales forces, and it features
campaign and lead management, as well as lead scoring. Oracle Responsys supports MCCM for
B2C companies.
Pegasystems
Pegasystems supports all four use cases adequately. It excels in predictive analytics and real-time
decisioning (Excellent scores) but lacks content marketing and ad management (Poor) and is weak
in social marketing and mobile marketing (Fair). Pegasystems focuses particularly on "next-best
offers" by drawing in CRM and external data and applying predictive algorithms to large datasets.
Pegasystems will appeal to the largest midsize companies in the financial services, healthcare,
technology and telecom industries.
Page 8 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
9. Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes' Customer Engagement Solutions suite suports all use cases adequately. It excels in
real-time decisioning (Excellent score). It scores low in content marketing and ad management
(Poor), with a further weak spot in mobile marketing (Fair). However, Pitney Bowes did strengthen
itself in predictive analytics, a weaker spot in 2014. Pitney Bowes supports both online and offline
channels. Product integration — especially between inbound and outbound activities — still remains
incomplete. The Customer Engagement Solutions suite will appeal to B2C companies in financial
services, telecom, retail, utilities and the public sector.
RedPoint
RedPoint's MCCM platform supports all use cases fairly well. It receives Excellent scores for
campaign workflow (a nice improvement from 2014) and mobile marketing, and it improved a 2014
weakness in predictive analytics. It still has a gap in ad management (Poor) and a weakness in
content marketing. RedPoint continues to build on its data capabilities — for example, it has added
support for unstructured data in Hadoop since 2014. RedPoint stands out in data-driven campaign
design but trails competitors in more fundamental campaign execution, reporting and business
intelligence, and user interface. Consider RedPoint if you are a midmarket organization and want to
unlock information silos with data from multiple sources and marketing channels.
Salesforce
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers solid support for all four use cases. It offers Outstanding
email marketing, and scores Excellent in campaign workflow, social marketing (where it slipped
back because of more active competitors) and mobile marketing. Only ad management gets a Fair
rating. Unlike many MCCM vendors, Salesforce excels in supporting digital channels even more
than in general campaign management functions. Consider Salesforce if you want to optimize B2C
interaction with an emphasis on digital channels.
SAP
SAP offers good support for all four use cases (campaign creation and orchestration are a bit
stronger than the other two). It scored Excellent for multidimensional segmentation, predictive
analytics and real-time decisioning. SAP bumped up its real-time decisioning score with the
acquisition of SeeWhy. SAP scored lower in ad management (Fair) and slipped back in content
marketing and social marketing (both Fair) because competitors have done more in these areas
since 2014 (SAP describes its strategy as an open platform, which integrates with third parties for
these solution areas here). SAP's offering will suit marketers who run large-scale integrated
campaigns and need to automate the data management and processes around them, including
sophisticated setups required for end-to-end process automation. The SAP MCCM product is
purchased most frequently by retail, consumer packaged goods, high-tech, professional services,
sports and entertainment, telecom, and financial services industries.
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 9 of 22
10. SAS
SAS's Customer Intelligence platform supports campaign execution and measurement adequately
and provides stronger capabilities for campaign creation and orchestration. SAS excels in the
fundamentals of campaign management. It scores Excellent for multidimensional segmentation,
predictive analytics and event triggering. It offers Outstanding real-time decisioning. However,
competitors have outpaced SAS in support for digital channels, where it receives a Fair rating in
social marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing and ad management. Consider SAS if you want
advanced analytics for segmentation and targeting, particularly if you are in the financial services,
telecom, retail or insurance industries.
SDL
SDL Campaigns (part of the Customer Experience Cloud) supports all use cases well. It offers
Excellent content marketing and social marketing. It has only one weakness: ad management (Fair).
Every other capability receives a Good score. SDL can handle more complex multichannel,
multistep campaigns, including the strong inclusion of assets in content marketing and social
marketing, something the other MCCM vendors lack. Consider SDL for multichannel, multistep,
event-triggered campaign management. SDL appeals particularly to upper-midmarket or large B2C
companies looking for support in email, Web, mobile and social channels.
Selligent
Selligent supports all use cases adequately, although it's a bit stronger in campaign creation and
orchestration. Selligent's capabilities don't stand out in any area, but it has only one area where it
scores Poor (ad management) and one where it scores Fair (content marketing). Since 2014,
Selligent has made progress in predictive analytics and real-time decisioning, which had been weak
spots. Consider Selligent if you are a B2C midmarket company in the retail, financial services,
publishing, or travel and tourism industries and you need basic easy-to-use MCCM without
spending too much.
Sitecore
Sitecore Experience Platform supports all use cases very well, especially campaign execution.
Sitecore offers Excellent content marketing and mobile marketing. Ad management remains the only
area of weakness (Fair), although it has made progress on this capability, too, since 2014. Consider
Sitecore to gather, analyze and apply customer insights and content in support of customer service
and digital commerce, particularly if you are in the automotive, consumer packaged goods, financial
services, energy, government, technology or retail industries.
Teradata
Teradata's MCCM product (part of its Integrated Marketing Cloud) offers strong support for
campaign creation, orchestration and measurement, although only adequate support for campaign
execution. Teradata offers Excellent multidimensional segmentation — an area where it has
improved since 2014 — and Excellent campaign workflow and predictive analytics. It has
weaknesses in content marketing and ad management (it made progress on the latter since 2014).
Page 10 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
11. Consider Teradata if you are in the financial services, media, transportation or telecom industries
and you need strong data management and analytics for segmentation, personalization and
performance measurement.
Zeta Interactive
Zeta Interactive's MCCM offering supports all use cases adequately. It offers Excellent email
marketing, but it has numerous weaknesses, including predictive analytics, real-time decisioning,
content marketing and social marketing (Fair), and a gap in ad management (Poor). Consider Zeta if
you are a midsize B2C company in high-volume businesses, such as travel, entertainment, media,
financial services and retail, and if you need speed to market, services and support for your MCCM.
Context
Multichannel marketing continues to be a goal for marketers, but marketers don't go from one to
"multi" overnight. Multichannel marketing unfolds gradually, with marketers starting with one
channel — usually email — and then adding another channel to coordinate campaigns and
interactions at touchpoints largely guided by the customer. The MCCM market has evolved similarly,
with vendors adding support for channels and other functions to keep up. All providers offer strong
functions in just one or two areas, such as multidimensional segmentation and campaign workflow.
In most areas, the strength of the providers can differ dramatically, from nonexistent or basic to
outstanding. Unless you're just starting out with multichannel marketing, the new functions you
need — many of our clients today seek event-triggering, mobile and predictive capabilities —
probably haven't matured. You can get a competitive edge by adding them to your campaigns, but
they entail risk as a particular vendor's offering may not have a long track record. We created this
Critical Capabilities document to give you an overview of MCCM vendors' capabilities so that you
can choose the product that best balances your old and new multichannel needs.
Product/Service Class Definition
MCCM products orchestrate company communications and marketing offers to customer segments
across channels, such as websites, mobile, social, direct mail, call centers and email. Capabilities
include the following:
■ Basic campaign management includes functions for segmentation, campaign creation,
campaign workflow and campaign execution.
■ Advanced analytic functions include predictive analytics and campaign optimization.
■ Advanced execution functions include loyalty management, content management, event
triggering and real-time offer management in inbound and outbound environments.
■ Digital marketing capabilities include ad management, content marketing, mobile and social
marketing, Web, and email marketing. Digital marketing extends the marketing process through
channels such as the Web, email, video, mobile and social applications, point-of-sale terminals,
interactive TV, and digital signage and kiosks.
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 11 of 22
12. MCCM offerings may also integrate leads with sales for execution in B2B and B2C companies.
Critical Capabilities Definition
Multidimensional Segmentation
This capability enables the grouping of audiences based on different attributes along multiple
dimensions. Traditional attributes include products and likely buyers. Newer ones focus on potential
profitability and the customer life cycle using search, social and open graph data.
Campaign Workflow
This capability choreographs the work involved in designing and executing campaigns, including
tasks, responsibilities and timelines.
Predictive Analytics
This capability enables marketing analysts to create models that forecast demand, determine
optimal campaign performance by adjusting its parameters, and run multidimensional scenarios,
such as for a product launch.
Event Triggering
This capability enables marketers to automate the sending of an offer or promotion based on an
action that an audience takes or something happening to it — for example, clicking on a particular
Web page, abandoning a shopping cart or having a birthday.
Real-Time Decisioning
This capability provides marketers with up-to-the-minute information and analytics that allow them
to make timely choices about in-progress campaigns, such as proposing a next-best offer on a
mobile device immediately after a website visit.
Content Marketing
This capability enables marketers to manage the commissioning, editing, curating, scheduling and
publishing of high volumes of content in an ongoing campaign.
Social Marketing
This capability gives marketers tools for managing the various elements of social media campaigns,
including multiple social sites, the people executing the campaign, the rules around what they can
and cannot do, and performance measurement.
Page 12 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
13. Ad Management
This capability automates the buying and placement of advertisements for a campaign. Features
could include real-time bidding and integration with demand-side or data management platforms.
This is the biggest gap in MCCM offerings.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the use of the email channel as a method to deliver marketing messages. Email
marketing continues to have high visibility. Many organizations have experimented with it or are
sending email marketing messages on a consistent basis.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing involves the use of mobile technologies to gather and analyze information about
customers and to target them with offers and content.
Mobile marketing requires using the right combinations of mobile technologies and applying them to
established techniques (such as direct-marketing email campaigns).
Use Cases
Campaign Creation
This scenario includes goal setting, audience segmentation and content creation for a campaign.
Campaign Orchestration
This scenario involves planning the channels through which a campaign will be delivered, as well as
its timing and sequencing.
Campaign Execution
This scenario focuses on process management for in-progress campaigns, including the
choreographing of elements such as content, tasks and people.
Campaign Measurement
This scenario involves the tracking of performance against the goals and metrics that marketers
have defined for the campaign.
Vendors Added and Dropped
Added
■ AgilOne
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 13 of 22
14. ■ Microsoft
■ Pegasystems
Dropped
No vendors were dropped.
Inclusion Criteria
We update the inclusion criteria every year to reflect changing user requirements and vendor
capabilities.
Functions
Vendors must support all the following:
■ Ability to create, execute and manage multichannel campaigns
■ Proven campaign planning, tracking and reporting, with role and approval capability
■ A UI suitable for marketing users who create, execute and report on campaigns
■ Basic campaign management functions, such as segmentation, campaign execution and
campaign workflow
Vendors must support at least three of six advanced functions:
■ Advanced analytics:
■ Predictive analytics: Capability to analyze customer behavior to predict churn, next-most-
likely purchase and propensity to buy. These functions enable a company to target
customers more effectively or stage the offers to make during interactions. Vendors may
offer these capabilities through partnerships, but we will look for proven integration and
references of actual use.
■ Campaign optimization: Ability to balance and coordinate multiple constraints to maximize
expected value from single or multiple campaigns. This capability enables trade-offs among
different campaign execution options, such as which campaign to use, which channel to
use, the number of interactions per individual and the expected value of each campaign.
■ Multidimensional segmentation: Ability to group audiences based on different attributes
along multiple dimensions. Traditional attributes have focused on products and who are
likely buyers. Newer groupings focus on profitability and the customer life cycle. New data
and old data play an important role in defining the target audience and understanding the
channel where you should focus the campaign. Traditional transactional data, third-party
data and anonymous customer data all contribute to targeting the right audience with the
right offer at the right time in the right channel.
Page 14 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
15. ■ Advanced execution:
■ Event triggering: The detection, prioritization and execution for a significant event affecting
a customer relationship.
■ Real-time recommendations: Ability to manage offers and deals with offer arbitration. These
functions combine the most-up-to-date information from data collected prior to the
interaction, as well as new data collected during a real-time interaction with a customer.
■ Multichannel lead management: The ability to provide lead management functions for both
inbound and outbound marketing initiatives. This capability includes, at a minimum, lead
collection, analytics, augmentation, scoring, process management and nurturing, across at
least three lead-generation and lead-management channels within a single campaign. In
addition, functions must support bidirectional integration with CRM or sales force
automation applications (such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle Sales Cloud and
Salesforce).
Digital Marketing Capability
In addition to the basic and advanced functions above, we will consider specific digital marketing
functions, such as Web analytics, social analytics, social marketing, mobile marketing, and ad
management and e-commerce connections.
Market Presence, Momentum and Viability
Vendors must have:
■ At least 20 customers using MCCM
■ At least 15 new customer wins for MCCM during the past 12 months
■ At least $15 million in revenue and enough cash to fund a year of operations at the current rate
of cash depletion
In addition, we emphasize innovative, visionary offerings. Visionaries provide a strong vision for the
MCCM market, or excel in advanced or emerging areas, such as multidimensional segmentation,
inbound marketing, mobile marketing, loyalty marketing, e-commerce and social marketing. They
can set strategic direction or demonstrate innovative capabilities in one or more functional areas
(such as advanced campaign functions or digital marketing integration) that the market will
eventually adopt. Visionaries may have campaign management implementations from different
buying centers, such as the customer service or e-commerce department.
Table 1 shows the weighting for critical capabilities in use cases.
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 15 of 22
16. Table 1. Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases
Critical Capabilities
Campaign
Creation
Campaign
Orchestration
Campaign
Execution
Campaign
Measurement
Multidimensional
Segmentation 20% 13% 3% 18%
Campaign Workflow 18% 13% 3% 13%
Predictive Analytics 13% 20% 5% 10%
Event Triggering 13% 13% 18% 5%
Real-Time Decisioning 8% 13% 18% 8%
Content Marketing 8% 8% 13% 8%
Social Marketing 5% 5% 8% 8%
Ad Management 3% 5% 10% 10%
Email Marketing 7% 5% 12% 10%
Mobile Marketing 5% 5% 10% 10%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%
As of February 2015
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products/
services. Each capability is then weighed in terms of its relative importance for specific product/
service use cases.
Critical Capabilities Rating
Each of the products has been evaluated on the critical capabilities on a scale of 1 to 5 (see Table
2). A score of 1 equals Poor (most or all defined requirements are not achieved), while 5 equals
Outstanding (significantly exceeds requirements).
Page 16 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
18. Table 3 shows the product/service scores for each use case. The scores, which are generated by
multiplying the use-case weightings by the product/service ratings, summarize how well the critical
capabilities are met for each use case.
Page 18 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
20. To determine an overall score for each product/service in the use cases, multiply the ratings in Table
2 by the weightings shown in Table 1.
Gartner Recommended Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
"Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management"
"How to Evaluate Multichannel Campaign Management Applications"
"Toolkit: Multichannel Marketing Heat Map, 2014"
"How Products and Services Are Evaluated in Gartner Critical Capabilities"
Critical Capabilities Methodology
This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of
products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance
for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms of
how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how
well they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each
product/service.
"Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in
terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the
set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition
decisions.
In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the
leading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end-users looking
to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match
common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use
Cases.
The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized
groups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Each
capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of
features are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated.
Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers each
capability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed side-by-side for all
vendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features.
Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0:
Page 20 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00271323
21. 1 = Poor or Absent: most or all defined requirements for a capability are not achieved
2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved
3 = Good: meets requirements
4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements
5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements
To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are
multiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases.
The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any
product; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation
or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of
several sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision.
Gartner, Inc. | G00271323 Page 21 of 22
