In this economy, everyone–at least, everyone in the software business–is trying to answer that fundamental question.

If your company is like ours, the answer probably depends on who you talk to and when you talk to them.  One day, a salesperson will come off a blazing hot call with a prospect who is investing heavily.  The next day, that same salesperson will hit a roadblock with a company that is pulling in the reins on IT spending.

I just came back from a conference where the publishers of TechTarget showed data indicative of a conflicted marketplace.   In their survey of IT decision makers, 29% were increasing their IT spend in 2009, while 38% were cutting budget with the rest holding pat.

When companies do buy, according to this survey, it’s for two reasons, either because they have to (yes, compliance) or because they want to become more efficient and smarter.  To that end, Business Intelligence (BI) was highlighted as the number one business application investment for CIOs this year.

That makes total sense to us.  In many ways, BI is a fundament of CRM.  We think an end business goal for any CRM customer should be to harness their data in a way that helps them become smarter about their customers, which, in turn, helps them optimize their marketing spend and increase revenue.

With RunCRM, businesses can do all of that and more. As an SAP channel partner, we connect it all together through BusinessObjects and analytics that make data actionable and meaningful.

So maybe we shouldn’t ask ‘are buyers buying?,’ and instead ask, ‘are we selling something that buyers need?’  And we think we are.