Software companies that sell Web portals and the technology used to customize them and integrate the applications with other systems fail to satisfy 4 out of every 10 customers' expected return on investment, a market research firm said Monday.

A customer survey of 11 software vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, and other big names in the market, found that the companies satisfied the ROI expectations of enterprises only 62 percent of the time, The Yankee Group said. Vendors did better with total cost of ownership, or TCO, meeting those goals 73 percent of the time.

"The results show that vendors, in general, do a much better job at estimating the cost of implementation and of maintaining their technologies, than they do in estimating the return on investment," Yankee analyst Michael Dominy said. "The vendors know their products well, but they don't understand their customers' business as well as they should."

Based on the opinions of enterprises, Microsoft Corp., IBM, and BEA Systems Inc. scored the highest among the vendors in meeting ROI expectations 78 percent, 75 percent, and 74 percent of the time, respectively. IBM, Microsoft and BEA also scored highest in TCO at 90 percent, 86 percent, and 80 percent, respectively.

Siebel Systems Inc. scored the lowest in ROI at 56 percent, and Siebel and Vignette Corp. scored the lowest in TCO at 69 percent each.

Enterprises expect the software they buy to meet the unique needs of their business within a specific market, Dominy said. Vendors, however, often lack the experience in their customers' business to help them tailor the products.

"The vendors need to do a better job in describing how their technology is used within the context of a specific industry to solve problems," Dominy said, adding that vendors should spend more time analyzing how vertical-specific customers are using the products.

Enterprises, on the other hand, should be more aggressive in making a vendor prove it has expertise in the would-be customer's business. "Enterprises have a role in this, and they can't just point a finger at the vendor," Dominy said.