CRM in the Cloud: What you need to know - IBM

CRM in the Cloud: What you need to know
The art of selling has fundamentally changed. No longer are there
simple buyer and seller relationships. We live in a world in which
consumers are increasingly in control of how products are designed,
marketed and sold. And they are fully aware of the power they wield.
If you have just a handful of customers, providing personalized service
is a snap. But for those with a larger customer base, things aren’t as
easy. Today’s customer relationship management solutions (CRM)
aim to help these companies mimic that personalized attention on
a larger scale by providing customer insight and helping companies
understand their customers as individuals, not just market segments.
Larger enterprises have long invested in CRM solutions that compile
customer data and turn that into actionable intelligence, because they
have the budgets and manpower to do so. However, for resourceconstrained
smaller companies, investing in expensive, long-term
CRM implementations often isn’t a realistic option.
While big budget CRM implementations may be out of reach for
some, CRM on the cloud is decidedly not. In our interconnected world,
engaging with customers is critical for success but can come at a high
cost. Cloud computing aims to alleviate that cost and makes CRM
accessible for everyone.
Less expensive and faster to implement
Cloud computing is often held up as a great way for businesses to
save money. As companies become increasingly price conscious
and space conscious, the cloud allows organizations to use only the
applications and hardware capacity they need without paying for idle
computing resources.
Paul Thompson, UK lead for SAP CRM implementations for IBM
Global Business Services, believes that the benefits of accessing CRM
applications on the cloud go far beyond just cost savings. IBM helps
companies implement IBM SmartCloud for SAP rapid deployment
solution, a complete CRM solution that is designed to be significantly
less expensive and faster to implement than traditional on-premise
CRM solutions. “Cloud not only takes away the headaches that
organizations have with regards to implementing solutions, it
“CRM on the cloud allows companies to
learn and gain value from the experience
because the cloud offers a productive
working system with little upfront cost
in terms of acquiring infrastructure and
skilled resources.”
also helps them keep the software up to date and ensures that the
organization is getting the right functionality.”
As businesses have increasingly recognized the immediate benefits
associated with CRM on the cloud, there has been a significant uptick
in companies using it. In fact, some companies are using CRM on the
cloud as a fast, cost-effective first step toward an on-premise CRM
solution, a larger project which can take up to two years to implement.
Graham Hall, IBM SmartCloud for SAP European Sales Leader,
explains, “These companies can get a CRM on the cloud up and
running in weeks. For many of those companies that want to dip their
toe in the water and eventually implement a full CRM system, CRM
on the cloud allows them to learn and gain value from the experience
because the cloud offers a productive working system with little
upfront cost in terms of acquiring infrastructure and skilled resources.”
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2013. All rights reserved. 1

Public versus private clouds
While the popularity of cloud is growing rapidly, marketplace concerns
around cloud security and reliability remain. In spite of the many
benefi ts associated with cloud, some companies are still hesitant to
entrust something as valuable as customer data to something they
perceive as out of their control.
And recent headlines haven’t helped alleviate their concerns either.
In the past year alone, the media has highlighted several availability
issues with some of the more high profi le public clouds. “The main
question we get from companies considering hosting in a cloud is
about security and integrity,” says Thompson.
Rather than highlighting the differences between public and private
cloud environments, these cloud incidents have sown confusion about
cloud computing in the marketplace. According to Hall, companies
need to understand the differences between public clouds, which
store resources at an off-site cloud provider’s facilities, and private
clouds, which hold capacity solely on a virtual private network. While
each fl avor of cloud has it benefi ts and challenges, private clouds
provide a much higher level of security and control than public clouds
offer - an environment which may be more suited for maintaining
sensitive information like customer data.
In addition, some vendors offer internal security tools to bolster the
security of the cloud. Thompson recommends, “When considering
providers, look at whether they have the depth of understanding in the
security space to ensure that the cloud solutions are well managed
and secure, not just in terms of being here in 12 months but also in
terms of being able to resolve the security concerns and constraints
we have in the moment. When thinking ahead, do they have the skills
in security software that will enable them to ensure that their cloud
solutions are capable in 12 months’ time?”
Getting started
In many respects the more popular cloud becomes, the more crowded
the marketplace is with a growing number of technology vendors
offering their own versions of cloud. With all the cloud options out
there, where does a company considering cloud begin?
Hall recommends that when choosing a vendor, look fi rst at the
fl exibility of the cloud offering in order to guard against being locked in
to any one cloud solution. “When you buy cloud, you need to be future
proofed against future architectural options,” says Hall. “And those
options could mean as your business grows – as many midmarket
companies do – can the CRM on the cloud grow with you? Can you
add more users, more capacity? And as you grow, you may want to
move from a public cloud to a private cloud. Or from a cloud to an
on-premise solution. Will I be able to do that?”
Hall points to some of the CRM cloud providers today that fail to offer
their customers much choice in the matter. “There are companies out
there that provide cloud on almost a commodity basis. You turn up
with your credit card and you can buy some time on the cloud. And
while that’s very easy to consume and very cheap, you are fi xed in their
public cloud strategy. If your needs change, you are forced to carry on
with the public cloud or start over with someone new.”
For those that want less of a commodity type of cloud, there are
providers that offer cloud technologies and services for private,
public and even hybrid clouds, allowing companies to select key
characteristics of each type of cloud to match their unique workload
requirements. While there are cheap cloud options out there,
companies should ask themselves whether the cheaper offering will
be fl exible enough for future growth.
Ultimately selecting the right cloud provider and solution is going to
be tradeoff between future fl exibility, functionality and cost. Hall notes,
“The right cloud provider should start the discussion with what do you
want to use your CRM for? What do you need to use it for? What’s your
business need? What are your pain points? And it may well be that
cloud can help the delivery of that.”
Learn more by going to:
ibm.com/businesscenter/forwardview
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