Summary



CRM is the fastest growing category of enterprise applications with worldwide revenues expected to reach $67 billion in 2004 (Meta Group). By automating and integrating a host of customer-related processes, vendors of high end CRM suites promise enterprises the ability to increase revenues, streamline processes, and reduce costs. While high end CRM vendors brag about the virtues of their solutions they neglect to discuss less appealing characteristics:

Excessive license and implementation costs

Endless implementation timelines

Technologically complex deployment

Organizational upheaval

Poor adoption rates

Weak links in solution set

Elusive ROI

Any one of these factors would be enough to trigger second thoughts about investing in a million dollar CRM suite. Taken together they cry out for an alternative. Online sales management is a particularly strong one, offering many benefits of CRM in a small fraction of the time and expense----and none of the chaos.

How to Achieve Results

Companies want increased revenue, streamlined processes, and reduced internal costs for real top-line and bottom line impact. But a big bang implementation of a full suite CRM suite is hardly the only way or even the best way to achieve these results.

Online sales management is holds many virtues for those seeking benefits of customer relationship management without putting their companies through a traumatic paradigm shift.

1.Low Cost

Online sales management is available at a small fraction of the cost of a full-fledged CRM project. Because the service is browser based, there is no software to install or maintain at the client site. Deployable in a matter of weeks, online sales management causes minimal disruption of work. Fully outsourced, the solution frees up IT staff with no need for support staff. At the same time, the solution provider’s ability to amortize costs across its entire customer base results in a cost-effective sales management solution.

Built to support commonly accepted sales methods, the solution can be simple and intuitive to use with minimal training time and expense. Total cost of ownership is limited to small subscription fees that are easily recouped many times over by real gains in sales productivity.

2.Saved Time

With none of the extensive planning, installation, customization, and training requirements of a high end CRM system, an online sales management solution can be up and running in as little as fifteen days. Rather than waiting until the end of the year for productivity to improve, the company sees higher revenues almost immediately. An online sales management customer can see more than a 15% increase in revenues that compounds in perpetuity.

3.Technologically straightforward deployment

Online sales management keeps it simple. Deployed as a stand alone solution, the system can begin to deliver ROI immediately, while allowing for an evolutionary phased-in integration process that minimizes risk and complexity. Rich interoperability standards such as XML, and a powerful strategy to create web services, enable on-line sales management to leverage the latest Internet trends and technologies for simple yet powerful integration with existing corporate systems- both best of breed and custom built.

4.Organizational simplicity

As a self contained sales department initiative, online sales management keeps the number of cooks in the kitchen to a minimum. The service can be designed to support existing sales resources and processed for a much smoother transition; coordination with other groups is streamlined by simple best practices guidelines.

5.Enthusiastic user adoption

Salespeople can be the toughest software customers around, reluctant to change the practices that have brought success in the past unless they can see immediate benefits in a new way of doing business. Online sales management is designed with salespeople in mind, giving them simple, intuitive functionality for automatic lead delivery and management, calendaring, channel communication, partner coordination, and other sales oriented functions that will improve their sales productivity from day one. By inviting rapid and enthusiastic adoption, online sales management ensures that companies get the results they are looking for.

6.A targeted, best-of-breed solution

Online sales management does one thing, and it does it well: improve sales productivity. The sales department is the first priority. At the same time simple integration based on open standards enables companies to link the solution to other applications to form a truly best-of-breed solution set.

7.Proven ROI

Calculating the return on an online sales management solution is simple. With organization costs minimized, the size of the investment is little more than the service fees-typically $20,000 for a 20- seat subscription. The payoff is simple to see. Giga Information Group reports that companies deploying SFA can expect, on average, a 15% increase in sales. For a $100,000,000 company that deploys an online sales management solution in 15 days, this amounts to approximately $14,000,000 in additional revenue the first year alone, for a return on investment ranging from 14500% to more than 30000%. Give the small costs and high returns involved the investment decision is easy.

Online sales management provides a fast, low-risk alternative that will have you counting your ROI and a lot more business.