Rob Bois
Rob Bois
ability advantage best business businesses companies customers easily either gives larger meet model quickly roll scale selling seriously small starting taken
Salesforce.com is selling an on-demand model that gives customers the ability to roll out a CRM deployment quickly and easily and then scale that deployment either up or down to meet their business needs. So far, small and midsize businesses have taken the best advantage of that, but we are starting to see larger companies that are seriously evaluating an on-demand model.
business eager evaluate knew large segment small surprised
We knew that the small and midsize business segment would be a large part of this market, but we were a little surprised at how many large enterprises were eager to evaluate the software-as-service option.
branch creating drivers interest larger market office players several surprise
There are several drivers in this market. One surprise has been larger enterprises that want CRM for a branch office or a department. Also, there are so many big players in the market now that it's been creating interest in hosted services.
generation hurdles mobile past reflected technical
We're past the first generation of mobile devices. Many technical hurdles have been eliminated, and that will be reflected in the market.
company degrees methods standards supporting
But each company has varying degrees of adherence to Web-services standards and varying methods of supporting those systems.
business context costs customers delivered expectation flip match people setup switch system training
Some customers have the expectation that you flip a switch and you're done. But there are setup costs and training costs and ramp-up costs. There's getting the system customized to match the business context and then getting people to use the system. CRM implementations are still complex, even if they're delivered in an on-demand fashion.
appealing companies involving meet quickly revenue running top
Revenue has become a top priority, and companies have to get something in place quickly to meet that need. Hosted has become very appealing to get up and running quickly with CRM -- without involving I.T. budgets.
areas broad business company involve talking thousand touch
It isn't a scalability issue. Typically when you're talking about an organization that will have more than a thousand CRM users, you're talking about a broad implementation that will touch more areas of the company and will involve more business processes.
extreme pill poison says seems seen though
Onyx says they have a poison pill in place, though I haven't seen it yet. It seems like an extreme method, but it could happen.
companies department enterprise larger rest roll seeing single
Larger companies are now seeing hosted CRM as a way to put the application in a single department to try it out, and then roll it out to the rest of the enterprise later.
breadth full headed match
Today, it doesn't match the full breadth of other on-demand CRM offerings, but they're headed in that direction.
budget business companies large lets quickly raid segment small
The small to midsize business segment is a very large part of the hosted market, ... Software-as-service lets companies get CRM in place quickly without having to raid the I.T. budget to do it.
disasters heard larger past smaller
Because most of these are monthly investments and in the past were smaller deployments, we haven't heard about the big disasters yet. The larger implementations will be the ones to watch.
definitely ground impact major microsoft stake
If Microsoft would put its stake in the ground on this, it could definitely make a pretty major impact in this business,