How to ensure your CRM implementation succeeds
or
How to guarantee yourself a successful career path!
By Simon Davis
WHY HOSTED APPLICATIONS MINIMIZE RISK AND MAXIMIZE POTENTIAL SUCCESS.
1. Financial risk
It is generally accepted that hosted applications are both less expensive to set up and that licensing fees are lower than most on-site solutions. Less up front cost reduces initial capital expenditure. Hosted solutions may have higher licencing costs but Support costs are significantly lower, they have shorter notice periods, typically 3 months, built into their SLA. Therefore the exposure through capital and revenue budgets is always less.
2. Execution risk
Execution risk is non-existent to minimal. Hosted applications do not need new
code to customize them so, while they do have limitations in the extent of their ability to satisfy every last little requirement you may have, they do not use customer specific code to operate. Therefore you may be using applications that have been tried and tested over a number of years by thousands of users.
Use the 80-20 rule - if you can achieve 80% of your business requirements without customization (at possibly 20% of the cost!) then it is worth it from the point of view of simplicity alone. In the situation that you can't reach that functionality threshold then look for solutions in your vertical market. Do almost anything other than customize your own solution!
3. Implementation risk
Hosted applications create minimum disruption at implementation. There are no
hardware or software implications therefore if you have no IT support or department or have an IT department that is constantly under pressure then hosted may be the only way to implement. Once the application is ready for delivery all that is supplied are the requisite Usernames and Passwords. Training should always be packaged with the applications. Again you are dealing with an underlying solution that may be in use on thousands of desktops around the world!
Hosted applications are always faster to implement and risk is reduced to that extent as well.
4. Complication
For all the reasons discussed above the ''Big Bang' approach to change is the one least likely to work. Most hosted applications are modular, ie; there are different but fully integrated bits of functionality that, together, make up an integrated whole. Nonetheless the individual modules work as stand-alone or part of a restricted system. They are therefore entirely consistent with a 'Think Big Act Small' philosophy. Draw down only those bits of functionality you need to start with and add to it only when you haven are fully happy with the original modules. The other big advantage is that you only pay for the functionality you demand. This further lowers risk.
5. Integration
Integration with existing systems is much simpler with hosted. On their own admission up to 80% of the software /application costs of the large scale integrators relating to porting of data from legacy systems. While that is not entirely a thing of the past the open architecture and modern day communication mechanisms of hosted applications are simpler, therefore cheaper. Use of XML, modern day ftp and SOAP make life both easier and cheaper.
Simon Davis is Managing Director of MarketDeveloper ltd, one of the UK's leading producers of hosted Marketing, Sales and CRM solutions. MarketDeveloper Ltd were amongst the first to market with ‘evaluate' in 2001 and the current version is marketed under the MarketDeveloper brand name.
Copyright 2005 MarketDeveloper Ltd
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