SaaS OnDemand CRM, 6 umpteen Factors

Dears,

You have analyzed your organization’s business needs and determined that an OnDemand CRM solution will best meet your requirements. And you’re not alone. Industry observers expect the market for on demand CRM to grow by more than 30 percent per year. But how do you determine which on demand CRM solution is right for you?

Here are six important factors to consider.

1.      ANALYTICS

CRM without comprehensive yet easy to- use analysis and reporting capabilities is akin to a car without a dashboard. Particularly in today’s challenging business environment where gaining actionable information resulting from sales, marketing and service interactions is a ‘must have,’ your CRM solution should include both real-time and historical analytics capabilities. Real-time analytics provides a current snapshot of critical business metrics such as your sales pipeline, while historical analytics uncovers trends as well as anomalies over time. CRM analytics should include both a wide range of pre-built dashboards as well as the ability to easily build customized reports that meet your company’s unique requirements.

2.      ENGAGEMENT

According to Forrester Research, approximately 75% of us now use social tools and technologies to collaborate, whether we create content, critique it, or observe it . This process of engagement has begun permeating the enterprise. But does your prospective CRM vendor support features that foster instant messaging-like collaboration right within CRM? Do they support RSS feeds and gadgets both inside and outside their application for information mash ups as well as easy information access – features that enable sales people to be as informed as possible about their prospects and customers in near real time? Do they offer complementary applications that increase the effectiveness of sales users in critical functions like sales prospecting?

3.      INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC CAPABILITIES

The cost of customizing plain-vanilla solutions is far higher than leveraging prebuilt features optimized for your industry that come with a CRM solution. By leveraging industry-specific, out-of-the-box business processes, data models, object models, and business logic, organizations can gain faster time to value at a lower total cost of ownership. Why build a custom solution at higher cost when you can buy an existing offering that includes most of the requirements a financial services firm or life sciences company, for example, is seeking from an on-demand CRM solution?

4.      INTEGRATION

Companies invest in best-of-breed front and back office applications to streamline critical business processes for a particular function. But if these offerings operate in their own silos, your organization may experience productivity issues, data quality problems, and reduced business

effectiveness. Does your CRM vendor provide standards-based integration capabilities that bridge your applications? Does it provide these offerings as a single vendor solution, ensuring one point of

control? In order for your salespeople to easily and efficiently conduct seamless business processes, such as building and attaching a quote to an order, comprehensive integration features are critical.

5.      INFRASTRUCTURE

A key reason you want on demand CRM in the first place is to outsource infrastructure issues. But like any purchase, you need to consider what’s under the hood, so to speak, and understand exactly what you’re purchasing. For example, if you speak with your IT department they may tell you they

want the peace of mind of having all instances of your company’s on demand CRM application located on a dedicated hardware stack rather than co-located on servers with data from other companies. This ‘single tenancy’ option also provides your organization with the flexibility of being able to determine when planned maintenance and upgrades occur in order to ensure your business isn’t disrupted during critical times. Another item you should consider: Is the hosting service provided directly by the CRM vendor itself or do they outsource it to another company? The

bottom line: not all hosted data centers are the same, or offer similar levels of service and flexibility.

6.      CHOICE

What if at some point your organization requires functionality that is best managed through an on-premise CRM solution? For example, a comprehensive loyalty, marketing resource management or e-commerce application may exceed the boundaries of any on demand CRM system. Does your vendor provide on premise CRM, as well as capabilities for seamlessly integrating both on demand and on premise CRM instances? While on-demand CRM may solve your current requirements, your business could require more flexibility and choice from your CRM vendor in the months and years ahead.

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