CRM crisis? ASPs save the day

Eagle Global Logistics faced a complex problem plaguing many big enterprises: creating a global repository of customer information from disparate systems inherited via acquisition. An adaptable CRM solution was required, one that could be deployed quickly across 300 offices worldwide. After a careful look at the market, Eagle decided to standardize its global sales force of 850 users on Salesforce.com’s ASP offering instead of opting for internally deployed enterprise software, long assumed to be the only viable option for large companies.

“We wanted to manage our business and not the system,” says Stephen Russell, Eagle’s senior vice president of sales, referring to the deployment and maintenance overhead incurred by such enterprise CRM applications as Siebel 7 and PeopleSoft eCRM.

Russell is hardly alone. A September survey of enterprises by Aberdeen Group found that 35 percent of respondents are already using hosted CRM products, with 85 percent saying they will evaluate ASP solutions as they consider deploying CRM for the first time.

But Russell knew that a hosted solution would work only if it could meet his key objective: real-time visibility across sales channels, so that all opportunities and deals could be tracked up to the minute, worldwide. Salesforce.com met that goal, primarily by enabling Eagle to standardize the way data in the sales pipeline was captured and by providing a centralized reporting structure for global sales campaigns. The Salesforce.com solution, which was implemented in just 60 days, has opened a new window on consolidated customer data since the system was deployed more than a year ago.

“We have very strong confidence that we have secured business based upon this improved global view of our pipeline,” Russell says. “If there is a sales channel or customer touch innovation they’re not able to satisfy for us today … I don’t know what it is.”

The growing acceptance of hosted CRM offerings provided by the likes of Salesforce.com, UpShot, Salesnet, and RightNow derives from several factors. For one thing, ASP-based apps have matured over the past few years from basic SFA to full-blown CRM. And of course, the tighter the budget, the better the ASP subscription model looks compared to high software-licensing and deployment costs. More important, CRM by its nature must be widely distributed -- and ASPs’ stock and trade is delivering high-functioning applications via the browser.

But recent enthusiasm for ASPs would falter were it not for new and improved integration and customization capabilities, which have finally become competitive with those of enterprise software.

Clearing the Integration Hurdle

When CRM ASPs first rolled out their hosted offerings, most offered minimal support for integration with back-end systems such as order entry or billing. That meant salespeople lacked access to such information as payment problems, purchasing history, or other data that could be used to enhance interaction with clients. On the flip side, without a tie-in to front-office applications that record expectations from the sales force for future sales, manufacturing couldn’t foresee the appropriate level of production.