"The No. 1 way to retain customers is by listening to their needs and finding a way to exceed their expectationsâ...The first step is gathering information. This happens in many ways, but most companies don't store and retain the information in ways that make it easy to sort through the information and find the useful contacts.

CRM Today,

Library By Geoff Ables,

President, Founder & Principal Consultant

"According to business acquisition experts, an estimated 80 percent of leads are typically lost, ignored or discarded, compromising top-line revenue growth. Some 73 percent of respondents in this survey say their company has no process for re-qualifying and revisiting business leads."

Business Week Research Services Sales and Marketing Strategies & News magazine

November 22, 2004

"I have read many articles over the past 12 months that focused on the critical success factors for a CRM software implementation. In every case I have finished an article thinking, "While I agree with nearly everything suggested in the article, the article is completely wrong." How can this be?"

Destination CRM, December 8, 2003 By Gregory Anicich, Independent Consultant focusing on business performance improvement through ERP and CRM implementations

"The philosophy of CRM tells us that, if we become superb customer relationship managers and if we provide superb customer value then the business benefits will follow. If you want to get your CRM program management team working in the spirit of CRM, rent a theatre and show them [Jerry Maguire].

The reality of CRM is another story CRM Today,

2004 by Daniel T. Murphy

"Communication is critical to roll-out success and user buy-in. "Err on the side of over-communication of objectives and status," advises Deloitte senior manager Jeff Wilson. Include customers in your communications for the parts of the project that will impact or be visible to them."

CRM Daily, July 9, 2004 By Joe Outlaw

"Corporations that have synchronized and optimized the key components of field service � people, process, parts, and data � have increased operational efficiencies, retained more customers, and driven up profitability, according to Aberdeen Group."

Aberdeen Group Study Released CRM today,

July 9, 2004

"The 360-degree view ¦treats the customer more as a living, breathing entity rather than as disparate sets of loosely related data records. And it recognizes how customer interactions affect just about every part of a company, from sales and marketing to manufacturing and production to delivery and support."

Complete Customer Profiling Remains Elusive Information Week,

April 5, 2004 By Tony Kontzer

"CRM requires access to data from many systems throughout the enterprise order status, inventory, billing, etc. Only integrations with back end systems and business processes across all departments of an organization can ensure the right person receives all the right customer information, at the right time."

Unifying customer data will improve CRM results destination CRM,

April 5, 2004 By Dave Baeder

To better serve customers, organizations must ensure that information can be accessed through one single source throughout the enterprise. "Organizations will find that all business processes from customer service to payroll, have an impact on the end user. All of these touch points can be considered CRM. By looking at CRM in this way, you will begin to ask what part of business is not CRM."

Destination CRM,

March 29, 2004 By Mike House

"AMR researcher Laura Preslan offers four key areas where organizational spending will reap the greatest rewards: 1. Customer analytic 2. Identifying high-value customers 3. Implementing better pricing practices 4.

Streamlining sales processes PDF zone,

March 9, 2004

"IDC says that 19 percent of those companies who took part in the survey had a return of 50 percent or less, 52 percent had between 51 and 500 percent, and 30 percent had a return in excess of 501 percent."

The Four Hundred,

February 16, 2004 By Timothy Prickett Morgan

"Hosted CRM services offer easier and faster set-up and more customization options. But integration, data control, training and even privacy issues could shift the decision toward an in-house implementation."

Computer world,

December 15, 2003 By Mark Hall

"Take only the most critical data from each customer contact solution and put it in a central database that existing systems can access is frequently more cost effective because it augments specialty software systems rather than replacing them. The implementation is easier on staff, making transition and acceptance higher."

CRM Today,

September 26, 2003

Ellen Reid Smith, Reid Smith & Associates, Inc.

"In the mid-1990s, Don Peppers and Dr. Martha Rogers listed what they described as the four necessary components of a successful CRM strategy: 1. Identify 2. Differentiate 3.

Interact 4. Customize CRM Today,

March 16, 2005 By Jeanette Slepian, President, Better Management

"Communication is critical to roll-out success and user buy-in. "Err on the side of over-communication of objectives and status," advises Deloitte senior manager Jeff Wilson. Include customers in your communications for the parts of the project that will impact or be visible to them."

CRM Daily, July 9, 2004

By Joe Outlaw

Is an eCRM system right for you? "If you have any hopes of meeting [high customer] demands, a solid customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is crucial. And with CRM initiatives stretching to the Internet (e-CRM), where customers can change how they do business at breakneck speed, determining how to maximize the return on the relationship becomes even more critical."

CRMIQ.com,

March 20, 2003 By Jason Compton

"e-businesses must also face the daunting task of harnessing the once 'border less' Internet in a manner that complies with new restrictions and regulations, moving e-CRM from a 'nice to have' methodology to a 'must have' strategy."

Destination CRM,

April 28, 2003 By Sanjay Parekh

Ask yourself the next time you talk to one of your customers, do you know everything about that customer right now? Do they have any support issues, what is the status of their orders, are there opportunities pending? If they ask you a question will you be able to access that information immediately and from anywhere in the world?

These are questions that require immediate answers when you are interacting with your customer, whether it is on the phone, in person or the Internet. Companies are struggling with these issues daily and if the information is not in a centralized, easily accessible location you run the risk that the customer may not receive the information they are seeking from your company.

b Track Inc
Tony Sciacca,VP Sales
June 05

"[To survive, a business] will align the organizations within the company to increase customer retention through earning customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is gained through delivery of products and services in a manner that enables the business application to work for the customer's business."

Destination CRM,

April 21, 2003 By David Weiss

Hosted Ownership represents the convergence of two, distinct elements - the fact that CRM buyers can now purchase a quality, browser-based CRM solution and the fact that the cost of dedicated server hosting has come down in price dramatically. After a company purchases CRM software in the hosted ownership scenario, there are two, ongoing costs. First, there's the annual maintenance and support fee mentioned above. Second, there's the hosting fee for a managed server.

Keep in mind that in the hosted ownership scenario, only the server is rented - not the server plus the application. Therefore, the monthly hosting cost is dramatically lower. For example, while a hosted multi-tenant solution might be as much as $125 per user per month, a server only can be $20 per user per month or less - a significant difference over time.

Lexnet Consulting Group
November 22 2006

"According to a recently completed study from the high-tech research firm IDC, successful implementations of CRM applications have yielded returns on investment (ROI) ranging from 16% to more than 1,000%."

SellingPower.com ,

June 7, 2004 By Henry Morris, Group VP of Applications & Information Access

The mid-market is a hot spot for CRM vendors as many smaller companies are deploying software that used to be the preserve of larger enterprises. It is also a key battleground in the fight between hosted and on-premise software. Anthony Plewes airs the arguments for both approaches.

Hosted customer relationship management (CRM) software has been remarkably resilient. Five years on from the largely ill-fated application service provider (ASP) boom, on-demand CRM software has continued to win plaudits and customers. However, on-premise packaged CRM software still has substantial support right across all company sizes and is the automatic deployment choice for many organisations.

The lower total cost of ownership (TCO) has been one of the key drivers for the growth of hosted solutions.

Analyst Forrester says many medium-sized businesses continue to seek an on-premise deployment rather than on-demand applications because many organisations of this size will only have one major office and will also have some IT administration capability. In its assessment of the available software options, Forrester identified Siebel Professional Edition, Sage CRM SalesLogix and Pivotal as the best match for medium-sized companies.

But not even the most dyed in the wool traditionalist can deny that hosted CRM software is catching up. A study from AMR Research in late 2005 found that sales of hosted CRM software grew 105 per cent in 2004 and that the hosted model has now become the prime delivery model for CRM applications.

Hosted companies RightNow technologies and Salesforce.com enjoyed 97 per cent and 83 per cent growth in the same year, respectively, with Salesforce.com moving up to 12th place in AMR Research's CRM revenue rankings. Gartner Group ranked Salesforce.com even higher, in fifth place just behind Oracle (before it acquired Siebel).

The lower total cost of ownership (TCO) has been one of the key drivers for the growth of hosted solutions. Its subscription-based model virtually eliminates the capital expenditure barrier for medium-sized companies. Typically packaged CRM software will only start to pay for itself after three years, so companies choosing that route need to be prepared to make their investment up front.

Chris Boorman, VP of EMEA marketing at Salesforce.com, says: "Companies in the mid-market need to use their IT budgets effectively. A hosted solution offers them clarity in costs through subscription and the ability to scale so that they can grow their business while keeping the same platform."

There is also greater acceptance of applications hosting as companies warm to outsourcing. Boorman says: "Organisations are becoming fed up of managing the complexity of on-premise software. They no longer need to manage the network infrastructure, servers and upgrades."

Many of the barriers to hosted software have come down. For example, in the past companies were not always able to integrate hosted CRM applications with the rest of their infrastructure but the wider use of web standards such as XML makes it much easier.

The ubiquity of cheap broadband connections for business overcomes many of the service quality issues that affected the early ASPs. However, this improvement should not detract from the fact that companies using hosted software are dependent on having a live internet connection to be able to access their key customer data. While hosted CRM service providers offer service levels, they are only able to do so up to the edge of their own environment.

In addition premise-based applications often require the involvement of a systems integrator and rolling out a product such as Siebel can take anything between two and four months. This is in contrast to hosted solutions where companies can be up and running immediately. Wayne Foncette, VP of UK and Ireland at RightNow, says: "Within 30 days our customers already have business benefits."

As a rule of thumb, software architected for on-premise deployment can be customised more than hosted services and offers wider functionality. Smaller companies, however, may find the functionality of fully featured premise solutions may be more than they need. Companies also need to have internal IT resources to be able to support the products on their existing infrastructure.

For example, Siebel's premise software offers functionality for 20 different verticals, compared to only four in its hosted offering. This vertical-specific functionality makes it easier for a company to customise its own software as it comes preloaded with the correct terminology for the industry.

Hosted offerings are starting to become available across the board. After a shaky start Siebel, now part of Oracle, has established its OnDemand product as a leading offering.

However, with such a large installed base, most of Siebel's customers still use the on-premise product. John Simpson, a senior director of sales consulting at Oracle, says: "I would estimate about 10 per cent of medium-sized businesses are choosing our hosted solution today. That is to be expected because medium-sized companies still have a culture of purchasing on-premise software. However, the pendulum is swinging steadily towards hosted solutions."

Like outsourcing, there will always be a core group of companies who will continue to deploy on-premise solutions. They like to maintain complete control over all their applications and have substantial internal IT functions and assets. But for the remainder of medium-sized organizations, a hosted offering will fulfil the majority of their CRM requirements.

By Anthony Plewes

2 May 2006