In a flat world, does it matter to a CRM buyer where a CRM company is headquartered?
Generally not. However, there are cases in which the location of a CRM company can influence a CRM buying decision.
An emerging brand is often better marketed in its local area than in others. A small business owner in St. Louis is far more likely to have heard of Less Annoying Software than a small business owner in Seattle. Conversely, someone in Seattle is more like to have heard about PipelineDeals than someone in St. Louis.
It’s probably not a stretch to presume that a greater percentage of companies in Redmond Washington, the home of Microsoft, use Dynamics 365 than in San Francisco, the home of Salesforce.
Some CRM companies started in one area, but shifted their headquarters location to another. For example, Insightly was founded in Australia. However, a condition of a $3 million investment from Emergence was that the company relocate to San Francisco.
Base CRM started in Chicago, but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014. The reason cited was difficulty finding tech talent in Chicago.
Workbooks is a well known brand in the U.K., but it is not as well known in the U.S.
Here’s a map of headquarter locations of over 30 CRM companies. It’s best to view the map in a separate browser tab.
Because there are clusters of CRM companies in some areas, be sure to zoom in to a regional level to see the exact locations. Salesforce, ProsperWorks and Insightly are located within several blocks of one another in downtown San Francisco. Differentiating their locations on the map requires zooming in to the 500 ft scale on the map.
HubSpot, Bullhorn and bpm’online are within close proximity of one another in Cambridge and downtown Boston. Their locations are best differentiated at the 1,000 ft scale.
The map shows the ultimate parent of CRM brands. Both Sage and SAP are based in Europe, but have large presences in North America and other parts of the globe.
