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Web CRM Software Advantages

Web Based CRM Software (such as sales force automation on the web) has a couple of advantages over traditional self-hosted CRM software. The most important ones can be reduced to: lower total cost of ownership, faster CRM deployment and operation and easier integration

The lower total cost of ownership of the On Demand Customer Relationship Management model is a result of the fact that Web Based CRM software does not require any large-scale and costly implementation project. Online CRM is bought out-of-the box and is operational immediately after signing-up for a subscription at vendors such as salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow and other pure-play web solutions. A web based solution does not require large investments in costly hardware and high operational budgets to maintain the hardware.

The IT budget for software maintenance will also be positively impacted as there is no need to hire expensive IT staff to provide support for software maintenance. The basic infrastructure is maintained by the CRM vendor. Of course, the web CRM software can be customized to meet the business needs (additional data fields can be added for example) but the standard solution is taken care off and is kept up-to-date to comply with the latest technology standards.

The second advantage is the rapid implementation of web based CRM software. Once you complete the sign-up process, the software is ready-to-use. One can log into the web application and can start using its basic functionality. In case customization is needed, the team responsible to the changes can digg in and start making modifications in order to satisfy the requirements of the organization.
However, don’t be fooled by this apparent simplicity. Like with all application introductions, the organization must adequately prepare itself. Make sure that business requirements are captured and validated, that all stakeholders are informed and aligned and that the scope is well defined. This will allow the application owner to make the right purchasing decision. The organization should therefor think about the different capabilities it wants to implement (such as Salesforce automation, campaign management, customer service, lead management, sales incentive compensation management, etc.) so that it can make an informed decision on choosing a CRM vendor. Like with all IT projects, think well before you start customizing the web based CRM software.The more customization, the more maintenance, and the more you will have to document your system.

The third advantage is integration. This is a result of the fact that web based CRM applications are built from the ground up on internet technologies such as http, xml and html. The functionality of web based CRM software (their APIs) can be easily called upon through so called web services, which represent a standard integration protocol based on http and xml (this principle of SAAS - Software as a Service - is called Service Oriented Architecture).

The other way around, data from other internet sources can be incorporated within the On Demand system. A good example is the integration of the Google’s internet advertising service AdWords in the SalesForce.com solution. However, to be fair, integration on the technology side is one thing, but integration on the semantic level is another kind of animal. It’s not because the technical integration can be established fairly easily that the correct data is exchanged between two systems. Integrating web based CRM software with your back office applications such as SAP remains a challenge, not so much because of the technical complexity but because of the data itself (a definition of a customer in SAP does not necessarily correspond with the definition of a customer in your On Demand application).

We demonstrated that Web Based CRM Software has a number of distinct advantages over software hosted on the company infrastructure. In the next post we will have a look at the disadvantages of Web CRM Software.

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