DuPont uses SAP's ERP software, and SAP's new offering interests Michlovich because of its back-office integration potential. DuPont is currently building a link that will allow its sales representatives to access historical customer data from its enterprise SAP system through the on-demand SAP sales software. That kind of back-end integration isn't something DuPont wants to explore with Salesforce.com, Michlovich said. Sill, Salesforce.com's user interface is a big hit with DuPont's sales team, and the company expects to continue supporting a mix of sales force automation applications for the foreseeable future, he said.
American Standard Companies executive Tim Gallagher, another early SAP CRM on-demand customer, said his company was using ad-hoc tools for managing sales: "We are the masters of Excel spreadsheets."
Gallagher is the vice president of customer care for the bath and kitchen divisions of American Standard, a manufacturer in Piscataway, New Jersey. American Standard is a longtime SAP ERP customer, but installing a CRM system wasn't in the cards for the near future because of the complexity involved, Gallagher said. When SAP approached him about the new on-demand offering, he liked the idea of a quickly deployable product. Gallagher said he didn't check out other on-demand options because he prefers to remain with a trusted vendor. He expects to go live with 150 users within a few months.
"We can do this for now, and when we're ready to move forward with a full-blown CRM system, we can do that," Gallagher said. "Down the road, we want to tie it into [our business warehouse]. We see this as the first step in connecting all this together."
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