Companies of all types and sizes have leveraged CRM to dramatically improve sales,
marketing, and service. Yet a major decision underlies the CRM selection process, and
that is whether to choose an on-premise application or an on-demand service.
Certain vendors preach the softwaredeployment model du jour as the only surefire path to CRM success before understanding your business requirements.However, embarking on this ready-fire-aim strategy increases the risk you’ll end up with a CRM deployment model that isn’t synchronized with your company’s business processes, cost structure, or IT resources.
Selecting the right deployment model must first and foremost address your key business problems and challenges, enabling you to meet your strategic business goals.And the more you know the pros and cons of each deployment model, the more certain it is that you will embark on a path to CRM success. Today’s CRM deployment options include:
ON-PREMISE CRM
These applications offer the deepest sales, marketing, and service functionality of any deployment option. They also offer highly specialized business-process support for a wide range of vertical markets.
Organizations selecting on-premise CRM purchase a software license and internally support the application. Although deployment can be longer for on-premise CRM than for shared on-demand CRM, companies with industrial-strength CRM requirements should consider on-premise CRM. For example, organizations that need to support tens of thousands of global users, provide the strongest levels of competitive differentiation through CRM, and ensure the most stringent behind-thefirewall data security are ideal candidates for on-premise CRM.

PRIVATELY MANAGED ON-DEMAND CRM
For organizations seeking the functionality of on-premise CRM, but which cannot allocate as many internal IT resources to their deployment, privately hosted and managed CRM is an increasingly popular choice. Companies buy the CRM license then pay a monthly fee to a third-party company to host and manage their application. This alleviates the capital
budget required for additional hardware and infrastructure, and eliminates the need for
deep in-house application and hosting expertise. The idea here is to choose a hosting partner that offers the highest levels of performance, scalability, and reliability.

SHARED ON-DEMAND CRM
With shared on-demand CRM, known as software-as-a-service, organizations receive
CRM as a subscription service, and need not purchase a license and dedicated hardware, or pay separately for maintenance, upgrades, and support costs—making it a lower-cost and lower-risk alternative to other deployment options. Shared on-demand CRM is ideal
for organizations that require comprehensive sales, marketing, service, and analytics
functionality, and that need a solution which can be rapidly deployed for fast results.With
their intuitive user interfaces, these services can be easily adopted organizationwide. They are optimal for companies lacking internal IT resources, or for those focusing
resources on strategic projects but that do not need deep CRM functionality or
industry-specific business processes.
HYBRID CRM
When CRM needs differ by function, department, or geography, hybrid deployment
is an option. For example, a company with globally distributed operations may want
shared on-demand CRM for its remote sales offices, where IT support is limited
and ease of use paramount, and on-premise for its service agents at headquarters where customization or industry specific functionality is required.
Clearly, one size no longer fits all in the world of CRM. It is increasingly important
that CRM solutions be tailored to the different needs of organizations or across
geographies and functions. The key to CRM success is solutions that perfectly address your challenges and allow you to meet critical strategic goals. You need maximum flexibility when deciding which solution is right for your organization, both today and as your business needs change in the future.
Oracle is the #1 global CRM provider, with the
widest range of on-premise, privately managed,
and shared on-demand applications—
all backed by single-vendor hosting and management
capabilities, plus the domain expertise
that comes with deploying an estimated
4.6 million live CRM users.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 9:17 am and is filed under help desk service desk contact center. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.