Enterprise Newsletter
 
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

Turn Geeks into Leaders

June 17, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM U.S./ET (GMT-4)

Larry Bonfante, CIO of the U.S. Tennis Association, will discuss the skills and approaches that your rising IT leaders must learn to be effective in an executive capacity.

How to Handle Your New CEO: Managing Turnover at the Top

June 18, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

Turbulent times have increased turnover at the top. Find out what Council CIOs have done to "break in" new CEOs—build relationships, set expectations, educate on the role of IT.

Mid-Market CIO Panel: Tips and Techniques for Improving Vendor Relationships

July 15, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

Executive Competencies Assessment Tool

Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.

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!

 
 
 

Five Best Practices for Implementing SaaS CRM

Software-as-a-service CRM has gone mainstream, says Forrester Research. A new report identifies five key strategies and tactics, including building a business case and negotiating a good service contract, that companies have discovered and used to realize CRM SaaS success.

 

June 02, 2008CIO

CRM software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications have made the big leap, claims Forrester Research in a recent report. SaaS CRM offerings "have moved beyond their previous status as a specialized deployment option and into the mainstream," write Forrester analysts William Band and Peter Marston in the May 2008 "Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM" report.

The analysts back up their assertion with recent Forrester survey data. A late 2007 survey of 1,017 software IT decision-makers at North American and European enterprises found that SaaS adoption is growing at double-digit rates. In addition, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they were already using, or were interested in using or piloting, SaaS software solutions. CRM, in particular, was being used by 36 percent of respondents. (For more on SaaS's CRM allure, see "On-Demand Software: CRM's SaaS Appeal.")

"With more frequent upgrades, faster deployment, lower upfront costs and high acceptance by employee end users," Band and Marston write, "customer demand for CRM SaaS applications shows no signs of slowing down."

For the CRM best practices report, Forrester spoke with 16 CRM professionals at buyer companies, professional services providers and software vendors. Included in the list of the buyer companies were: Citizens Financial Group, Equifax, High 5 Sportswear, IAC Search & Media, Polycom, Seagate Technology, Shaklee and Symantec.

Out of those interviews, Band and Marston identified five critical strategies that have enabled these companies to "capitalize on SaaS," they write in the report. (See "The Truth About On-Demand CRM" for an in-depth examination.)

1. Build the Right Business Case.

Organizations and their CRM chiefs who are evaluating deployment options should weigh both SaaS and traditional on-premise solutions "against criteria more comprehensive than just cost tradeoffs alone," advise Band and Marston. "Depending on the business models and economic drivers, differences in business benefits, flexibility and risk are important when comparing these deployment options."

The analysts advise decision makers to "dig deep" to understand the total costs of a SaaS CRM—which should include software license fees, internal labor implementation costs, professional service fees, user training expenses, mobile and offline/online system access, industry-specific functionality, storage capacity fees and premium help desk support.

Two other areas to closely examine are whether the SaaS vendor's technology will allow a company to migrate to an on-premise application set in the future, and the viability and long-term prospects of the selected SaaS vendor. (For more on SaaS integration and migration issues, see "CRM's Integration Blues.")

 
 
Loading...
 
WHITE PAPERS

Investing in Business Analytics Technology

Find the answers to your questions about business anyalytics initiatives.
 

Document-Sharing Solutions

Examine the benefits and challenges that IT executives are facing and how they plan to control the changes.
 

How Can Your Organization Weather This Economic Storm?

IT executives are under intense pressure to cut costs, and that pressure is significantly increased by the current grim economic outlook.
 

Deliver Higher-Performing Technology Services with ITIL

Enable the business and your IT organization to cope with the effects of economic stress.
 

Making Data Center Infrastructures More Adaptive

Learn how administrators can tackle problems in ways that were previously impossible.
 

Server Management Tools Automate Capabilities and Improve Efficiency

In this white paper, Info-Tech covers the key considerations of server management tools to take the pain out of day-to-day provisioning, patching and operational support.
 

WEBCASTS

Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Enterprise Cloud Computing: Ready for Primetime?

The progression toward enterprise cloud computing is happening today, as industry leaders deploy technologies that ...
 

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future

Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service? Wh...
 

Enterprise System Management Challenges in Big Organizations with Eli Almog

In this Podcast with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office, discusses how IT managers can know when it...
 

A Down-to-Earth look at Cloud Computing

Is cloud computing going to take over the data center as we know it? Join us as we talk about cloud computing with...
 

BSM in the Field, Practical Insights from Peter Armaly

Have you thought about BSM, but haven't quite gotten the buy-in you need? Get down and dirty with BSM installations...
 

Resource Alerts

Get instant email notifications by topic when white papers, webcasts, and case studies are added to our library.

 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Maximizing the Business Value of the PC Infrastructure

Using Open Source to Deploy Web Applications

How Interactive Viewer Reduces the Effort to Meet Visualization Requirements

White Paper: 8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

Software Executives: Take Control of Your Organization's Code Quality

BPM ROI calculator

Oracle's Application Grid Technical Demo

Next-Generation Application Servers and Infrastructure

Application Infrastructure at Enterprise Organizations

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Craft a Strategy to Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership

A Natural User Interface for Enterprise Applications

On-Demand HR for a Global Organization

Four steps to populate your CMDB.

Delivering Secure and Reliable Data through Spreadsheet Automation

Open Source BI: Inexpensive Solutions for Developers

Gartner Shares Predictions for 2009

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

Accenture: Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage. More...

Better spam protection with Postini for just $1/user/mo

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

infoBOOM! - The Mid-Sized Company CIO's Exclusive Community

Accenture IT Consulting: Logical meets technological. More . . .

The Fraudster Economy Model: Operating a Business in the Underground

Revolutionizing Enterprise Application Deployment

Learn how to managing client systems in the enterprise.

Cloud Computing: Read about VMware's compelling vision & set of products

Top-line Performance that's Bottom-line Efficient

How Open Source is Changing the Face of Enterprise Software

BPM Survey Results: The Real-World Analysis

Ready to Act: 3 Recommendations for Agile Processes

Oracle WebLogic Server Technical Demo

Data Grids and Service-Oriented Architecture

Achieving the Impossible: Unlimited Application Scalability

A Middleware Foundation for Application Grid

Next Generation Enterprise Applications

A Truly Global HCM System

Learn how to provide complete Business Service Management.

Increase ROI of Your Application Portfolio

Financial Institutions Need Rich Internet Applicatons

Forrester: Implementing Rich Internet Applications

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

Accenture IT Consulting: Enabling high performance. More...

Top Five CIO Challenges

Insight makes it easy to spend your Microsoft subsidy check.

Five minute business analytics assessment. Immediate results.

Dangerous Collaboration Practices: 5 Ways IT Can Minimize Risk

Accenture: Outsourcing for uncertain times. Click to learn more.

The Case for Investing in Business Analytics Technology. Read white paper.