A report on the future of CRM released last year by research firm Ovum, explored the future market for enterprise solutions such as Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), ERP and Contact Media Integration. This CRM solution is similar to Computer Telephony Integration, but links telephone, online and other customer interaction.

While ERP takes the lion's share of organisations' resources now, Ovum predicted these markets will converge, with universal business applications (UBA) the principal point of integration. This solution combines most critical business applications, and although it is not yet ready for deployment, it is expected to account for half of the market by 2004.

As UBAs will not be able to provide all solutions within one system, ERP and BI markets will still exist, although each will continue to be implemented as one part of a business solution, rather than a solution of itself.