You’ve probably been hearing more about cloud-based customer relationship management software, and that’s not about to change anytime soon. According to a recent study by AMI-Partners, the SaaS CRM market already represents 570,000 small and medium businesses and is set to undergo double-digit year-over-year growth in the next five years. The marketing research firm says that during that time spending on SaaS CRM will outpace on-premises CRM by a margin of nearly 4 to 1.

According to AMI-Partners, the slow economy has pushed customer retention and acquisition into a higher priority for many small businesses, many of which are increasingly looking toward CRM software for help. The good news is that cloud CRM solutions today are affordable for many small businesses. They’re also increasingly making it easy for businesses to “listen” to online conversations and communicate more effectively with customers over social media.

Inc. recently posted a good slide show ^[1] that features several popular social CRM options.

Read more at Channel Insider ^[2].