IT DRILLDOWN
 
NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Social Responsibility's Strategic Benefits

December 15, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Ed Granger-Happ, CIO of Save the Children, for a discussion of how creating an organization that is socially responsible improves staffing, retention, leadership development and overall corporate health.

Working With and Communicating to Your Board of Directors

January 13, 2009, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)

CIO panelists who will share tips and experiences working with their boards: Twila Day of SYSCO; Jeff O'Hare, West Corp.; Marc West, formerly with H&R Block.

IT's Role in Growing Mid-Market Companies

January 14, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET (GMT-5)

Mid-market Council members will share their companies' stories and challenges in driving or coping with growth. Panelists represent Veterinary Pet Insurance, Medicis Pharmaceutical, and Intrax Cultural Exchange.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 
SUBSCRIBE TO CIO
 
Are you involved in setting the direction for your company's IT budget or strategy?

Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!

 
 

CRM's Integration Blues

On-demand applications like Salesforce.com have many advantages, but can they integrate easily with your other core apps? Results still vary.

 

October 05, 2007CIO — Software as a service (SaaS) has gone beyond the realm of rogue deployments, and CRM software, most notably Salesforce.com, has led the way through the enterprise front door. IT pros have learned plenty about the pros and cons of on-demand CRM. Among the lingering concerns: Can you make Salesforce.com and other on-demand CRM apps play nicely with your ERP and other core systems? How much work and what arrangements will this integration require? Results still vary.

Calvin Do, CIO of color equipment manufacturer EFI, knows firsthand the limits of SaaS integration to enterprise processes. For example, he's discovered that SaaS providers don't typically support single sign-on, an obvious enterprise need. And they often don't support APIs of other enterprise applications, at least not out of the box. For example, connecting Salesforce.com to Oracle and SAP applications requires buying additional connector software or creating your own connectors via Web services. The limited cross-vendor integration is why Do initially restricted his SaaS deployments of Salesforce.com and talent management application SuccessFactors to department-level applications. (He later added an enterprisewide deployment.) In the department-level applications, integration is handled at the data-exchange level and via simple API calls to trigger, for example, a data upload and the related process.

The trick: Don't let on-demand CRM's advantages blind you. Enterprises must carefully consider the scope of their on-demand CRM goals and whether potential software has the integration capabilities to fit with the larger software portfolio.

"You can't simply outsource CRM. It will ultimately need to integrate into your people, processes and technology," says Isher Kaila, research director for CRM at Gartner. "Only a minority of implementations out there have gotten this [trade-off] right," he adds.

Where On-Demand Works
A primary advantage of on-demand CRM continues to be that IT needs to expend little effort to deploy, maintain or integrate the application. Typically, the vendor does most of the work at its site: maintaining the code base, managing the servers, handling security and ensuring availability. This reduced effort also means business units don't have to wait long to get the CRM functionality in place. That's a powerful incentive for many CIOs trying to satisfy backlogs of user demands.

Still, on-demand CRM software doesn't work for everyone since it cannot be customized for complex business processes, says Gartner's Kaila. (It can be configured, of course, within the bounds set by the vendor.) Furthermore, on-demand CRM software is typically less capable than self-hosted applications, even when both come from the same vendor, Kaila notes.

Loading...
 
 
ABCs
 

Just the basics, please. Sometimes we all need a refresher or we need to make sure our team and our colleagues are all on the same page.

Over 25 tutorials on everything from business intelligence to virtualization.

 
 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

State of the Market: Application Performance Management

Proactively Identify and Resolve Performance Issues

Union Bank of California Improves its Online Banking Services

Learn how the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor improves performance

Determine the ROI of Web Application Acceleration Managed Services

Achieve a 50:1 Data Deduplication Ratio

APM Solutions: A Window into Complex Web Applications

APM Solutions Offer Insight into Complex Web Applications

Check Point Endpoint Security - Unifying Essential Components

Data Protection: Challenges for the Traveling User

Optimizing Infrastructure Control

File Integrity Monitoring: Secure Your Virtual and Physical IT Environments

Effective Security with a Continuous Approach to ISO 27001 Compliance

Explore the value of bringing better BI to business users through dashboards.

The ECM Paradox: Extending Local Flexibility to Strengthen Central Control

Grassroots Data Governance with SAP MDM

Data Loss Prevention: Keeping Sensitive Data Out of the Wrong Hands

A Guide to Understanding Hosted and Managed Messaging

Google Apps Premier Edition Helps Indoff Manage E-mail More Effectively

CapGemini Cut Call Center Costs with Google Apps Premier Edition

Comprehensive Review of Security and Vulnerability Protections for Google Apps

Web 2.0 The New Face of the Web

Information Agenda - An innovative approach to transforming business information

Live Webcast - Ensuring Business Services Delivery

The Case for Business Software Assurance ~ Securing Your Applications

Effectively Managing High-Performing, Business-Critical Web Applications

Managing Service Level Agreements to Achieve Business Goals

Customer Hubs Deliver on the Failed Promises of CRM

Improve Web-Enabled SAP Performance

Gartner on Data Deduplication Cost Savings

Data Protection Options Explained

The Link Between APM and Customer Satisfaction

Providing Around-the-Clock Customer Satisfaction

Revolutionizing Endpoint Security with a Single Agent

White Paper: Learn how wide-area data services accelerate applications

Effective Security with a Continuous Approach to ISO 27001 Compliance

Optimizing Infrastructure Control

Configuration Assessment: Choosing the Right Solution

Gap Analysis: The Case for Data Services

Learn how Technology Escrow provides access to critical application source code

Information Security: Data Drains and How to Prevent Loss

Best Practices in Choosing and Consuming Managed Security Services

A Guide to Messaging Archiving

2008 Google Communications Intelligence Report

The Impact of Messaging and Web Threats

Comparing Google and Other Leading Messaging Security Solutions

Mission Impossible: Building the Right Project Metrics

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

A New Model of Business Intelligence

Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) report: Save Millions in Fraud Losses.