By the end of next year a quarter of customer relationship management (CRM) projects will be postponed or cancelled because of a shortage of workers with relevant skills, according to analyst Gartner.

The organisation told delegates at its CRM Summit in London this week that the dearth of expert CRM consultants and systems integrators will get worse as projects become more ambitious.

Ed Thompson, research vice president at Gartner, says the problem can be traced back to the dot com crash when software and consulting work bottomed out.

‘In 2004 consultancy work grew but firms did not recruit in 2004-2005 in case growth was just a blip,’ he told Computing.

‘However, use of consultancies grew by more than 70 per cent and CRM consultants sold out in the beginning of 2006.

Oracle’s purchase of Siebel is likely to exacerbate the situation as firms look instead to best-of-breed vendors, says Gartner.

It predicts that during 2007 more than 60 per cent of all new CRM applications operational within two years of purchase will come from smaller suppliers, rather than Oracle or SAP.

‘If firms demand niche providers, consultancies will not have those skills because they have focused on building SAP and Oracle skills, which will make the CRM skill shortage worse,’ said Thompson.