Recent years have seen many left-field moves from enterprise tech juggernauts looking to find success in new markets.
Whether it was Microsoft releasing Designer to compete against Canva or Google entering the foldable smartphone market, these giants are prone to audacious moves that inspire growth.
Amazon moving into the CRM market could be the next surprising shift.
While the trend in 2024 may have been more skewed towards CRM vendors expanding into adjacent fields – like CCaaS – the last decade has seen several examples of broader CX tech providers branching into the CRM market.
The likes of Freshworks and Zendesk both began offering CRM solutions during the late 2010s. Meanwhile, Amazon’s prominent cloud rival, Google, reportedly tried to acquire HubSpot last year and backdoor its way into the space.
Recognizing this trend, Martin Schneider, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, proposes that Amazon may consider making a major CRM move this year.
Schneider made the surprising suggestion when including Amazon in a top ten list of CRM platform providers to watch out for in 2025.
While he did clarify the inclusion by explaining that it was based more on whether Amazon could become a CRM provider, the analyst argued that the vendor’s existing capabilities in CCaaS, data management, and AI gave it the perfect building blocks for entering the CRM market.
Moreover, Schneider pointed to the current capacity of generative AI (GenAI) to drastically simplify the process of building CRM frameworks and user experiences.
The Constellation Research man likened Amazon’s situation to that of Microsoft in the past, which sat on the puzzle pieces for a long time before launching its Dynamics CRM in 2007.
“Amazon is in a similar position,” said Schneider. “They’re sitting on a goldmine of tools and data – enough to dominate in retail CRM, clienteling, profiling, and even commerce integration.
Their ability to work with unstructured and distributed data using their database portfolio is a massive advantage. The pieces are there; the question is whether they’ll put them together.
However, in response to Schneider, Rebecca Wetteman, CEO & Principal Analyst at Valoir, questioned whether Amazon may prefer to operate under its current model of being a CRM facilitator.
Indeed, the likes of Salesforce already offer its CRM solution via Amazon’s platform and marketplace – providing Amazon with a stake in the CRM sector without having to commit the resources and effort into launching its own tool.
Wetteman also argued that Amazon lacks the enterprise sales framework needed to compete effectively in CRM.
She believes that heads of sales, marketing, and service are unlikely to consider Amazon for CRM solutions, given their expertise lies more with CIOs and developers.
This, she suggested, might lead Amazon to focus on its strengths rather than pursuing a direct CRM strategy:
With AI, Amazon could position themselves as the go-to provider for vendors who need white-labeled AI solutions or industry-specific use cases.
“That might make more sense than competing directly in CRM.”
Schneider agreed with Wetteman’s idea of Amazon positioning itself as a white-label provider, believing that the company is well placed to support vendors without strong AI strategies rather than directly competing in the CRM space.
In addition, he suggested that Amazon’s advanced AI capabilities and expertise in handling complex, multimodal use cases could also drive partnerships and integrations.
This could lead to system integrators potentially including Amazon in larger CRM projects, even if they don’t formally enter the market as a CRM vendor.
Although Amazon has made no direct CRM noises just yet, given its foundation of supporting capabilities and position in the customer service space, it is certainly worth keeping an eye on over the next 12 months.
To check out the full discussion between Schneider and Wetteman, watch the full video here.
