Where is CRM on the Cloud?
So where is CRM technology headed to? Towards the end of the last year, Salesforce.com announced the integration of their on demand platform with the social networking site Facebook and with Amazon Web Services. This was touted as the entry of CRM in the Cloud. What this integration does is really interesting. A user will be able to associate a lead in the CRM application to a user in Facebook. This allows the user to get more details about the lead and this is particularly helpful in cold call scenarios. Once a particular person is identified, his/her friends and friends’ friends all tend to share a similar interest and this will go a long way in identifying potential leads for a particular product. So this integration helps in pulling Facebook contact data into the CRM application. And moreover, all the stuff that you normally do on a Facebook page like sending a message, writing on the wall etc. can also be done through this integration.
While all this is nice to hear, there is a void and of course a lot of questions to be answered. Is a CRM executive expected to process generated leads or are they going to keep messaging their contacts and writing on their walls? Or even if they do, how many contacts, especially the enterprise customer contacts will be interested in somebody poking them to sell something? That’s not why they signed up in Facebook. What kind of advantage this integration will bring is anybody’s guess. Having said that, there is no doubt that this kind of integration is definitely a step in the right direction. A lot is already happening in the social networking sites and enterprises will love to have such sites linked to their CRM application. Most companies already a have Facebook page and they do a lot of CRM stuff on their pages. Many questions are being asked by Facebook users and companies strive to clear as many doubts as possible for their customers. Another good integration would be to get these questions as customer service requests in the CRM application and responses getting back to the Facebook user as a post.But does all this qualify as CRM on Cloud. In my opinion – hardly!
Enterprises can definitely use the SaaS model as long as they are interested in a stand alone model with some basic integrations. But SaaS is just not enough if an enterprise wants to have an end to end business process system in a cloud infrastructure. To expect such a comprehensive system without going through the infrastructure headache will become a normal requirement in the near future.Users currently having on-premise setups, have control over what they can build and configure. They want to be able to provision and maintain a tightly coupled ERP-CRM business process. They definitely want to have access to the database and prefer the single tenant model. While all this can be comfortably done on-premise, imagine having all this on the Cloud infrastructure. Even better, think about being able to transfer the cloud resident system back to your IT org. And when needed, to be able to transfer it back to the cloud with a different cloud provider.
This ideal scenario will require providers to agree on a set of standards to be able to exchange and access the services freely. There are many such concerns that need to be address before one can think about making this a reality. Before that, there are various steps in the Cloud evolution that we need to go through. Enterprises already having significant investments in their present infrastructure would not want to just throw them away. They should try increasing the efficiency of their available capacity through virtualization techniques. This will enable them to move towards a private cloud setup, where they can get cozy with the concept of putting applications and systems on the Cloud.Enterprises will look for a mature market where the standards issue mentioned above takes a definitive shape, with acceptable security, a better understanding of the legal and regulatory scenario and more importantly, measurable and manageable SLA regime. For now integrating Web 2.0 features into CRM applications is a start and we will continue to delve into this topic of CRM on the cloud.
Comments
SaaS software and services I believe can be closely linked to cloud computing, apart from one thing. Cloud computing works in ways that maximizes space, bandwidth etc so both the service provider and customer maximize their investment. Cloud CRM if developed correctly could go a long way to allowing potential CRM users gaining a ROI on a PAYG scheme, i.e. paying per database record saved, per e-mail sent, etc. Until the model becomes much like cloud computing has done for website hosting or data hosting it cannot be classed as cloud CRM.
Posted by: CRM guru | June 9, 2009 10:26 PM
CRM on the cloud, in the proper sense of it, is still in a very nascent stage. As you rightly pointed out, there is a lot to be done before we see acceptable standards and measurable ROI before CRM on the cloud becomes a mainstream strategy. As CRM finds its place in the cloud, the integration of the CRM applications with the other business process systems will become the critical path for success.
Posted by: Pradeep Baptist | June 14, 2009 09:54 AM