Simplify Software as a Service (SaaS) Integration
By Simon Peel
December 2008
Introduction
Fuelled by a fiercely competitive business environment that requires the pace of business and technology to accelerate, companies need to adapt to change faster, and their IT departments must deliver innovative technology solutions rapidly and at a lower cost. As a result, companies are adopting Software as a Service (SaaS) applications to address these challenges, in particular for reducing costs of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions.
SaaS CRM solutions are an attractive alternative to traditional on-premise complex CRM applications because they allow organizations to rapidly meet the changing needs of the business. They
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If this doesn’t happen, they get frustrated. Although these applications are simple to see immediate results, their integration with other systems in a company is critical to realizing the full value they offer. Integration: The Last Barrier to SaaS
As the success of SaaS CRM solutions grow, what was once a department-level strategy to reduce cost and increase the effectiveness of sales teams, may now face hurdles when growing to support enterprise wide scale. Users now require access to critical systems throughout the organization and may have a plethora of existing applications, including other on-demand applications in addition to on premise systems which they must integrate with on a daily basis. The result is that integration becomes more critical to the continued success and adoption of such a solution.
Since SaaS applications offer the same benefits to all customers, any advantages gained at one company are just as easily available to its competitors. SaaS applications by themselves provide little differentiation unless they are integrated with highly customized back-end applications that are core to a company’s operations. Retaining this differentiation and making the enormous quantity of corporate data available to the newer, more cost-effective SaaS systems brings the issue of application integration to the forefront. This is especially important
From an organizational and profitability standpoint, an efficient, easy to use, and unified CRM system, captures all key and critical data from sales and marketing to commercial operations, all the while focusing on sales process, sales efficiencies, and increasing sales, all contributing to the bottom-line profitability of the organization. Data has proven that CRM platforms increase the productivity and profitability of individual departments and subsidiaries, these same platforms and characteristics will have the same ramifications on a larger scale organization, especially an organization that spans the global footprint, such as
SaaS, Software as a Service is the software, which is being deployed and provided over the Cloud environment (Grance, 2009). It represents one of the biggest Cloud markets and is growing exponentially fast (Rouse, 2016). The web is being used so that applications can be delivered, which are thoroughly managed and organized by a third party vendor and whose interface is undeniably accessed on the client’s side. The majority of the SaaS applications can be run directly from a web browser, needless of any downloads or installations. Some plugin’s requirement would be there, though. Blaming to the web delivery model, there is a well-noted eradication of the need for installation and process of application’s running on individual computers by SaaS. Some imminent examples of SaaS are: Google Apps, Salesforce, Workday, Concur, Citrix GoToMeeting, and Cisco WebEx
Salesforce.com was formed fifteen years ago with the vision of revolutionizing the entire concept of CRM in the cloud computing system. It leads to the development of a new philanthropic model for all the others to follow, and it was only achieved by the wholehearted dedication and sincerity of its employee force, which have over the years formed a pillar of strength for the company. The stakeholders and the customers have all shown their immense support in the system, and it is because of their faith in the system, today it is known as the leading enterprise in the cloud-computing ecosystem. Industries and companies can now get connected to their consumers in a whole new way by the use of the latest innovations in mobile technology, cloud
SaaS is generally acknowledged to have been acquainted with the business world by the Salesforce. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) item. As one of the soonest contestants it is not amazing that CRM is the most famous SaaS application range, however, email, budgetary administration, client administration and cost administration have likewise gotten great up
Because of their background, knowledge of the billing systems and understanding of the market needs, they were well aware of the “Software As A Services (SaaS)”, its future as well as the opportunities and the obstacles. They had also envisaged the market need for an efficient billing system. Their vision was to provide an e-commerce platform that powers the service industry at a low cost
Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is the world leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software specifically designed for small and medium businesses, enterprises and government organizations. Salesforce.com was the first enterprise software company to break the $1B barrier of CRM sales on the cloud computing platform (Salesforce Investor Relations). It is also the first company to successfully orchestrate complex product and services strategies entirely on the Internet. This company's ability to orchestrate connectivity, cloud integration, enterprise storage and enterprise-wide applications is revolutionizing the economics of cloud computing today (Hedgebeth, 49). The strategic direction of the company is to expand quickly off of its sales base of applications, into customer service and support (Salesforce Investor Relations). As research studies from Gartner have shown, the majority of software sales in CRM today are in Customer Service and Support (34%) followed by Sales (26%) and Marketing (20%) (Salesforce Investor Relations). Salesforce.com reported $3B in revenue for their latest fiscal year and a $270M loss. Salesforce.com's success in enterprise CRM against entrenched competitors including Oracle and SAP is noteworthy, as both of these competitors rely on an on-premises application delivery model. The on-premises model is significantly more time-consuming to implement and often requires companies to
Using software as a service (SaaS) for Human Resource database management has several advantages. One advantage which is most often weighed in on is cost. Most SaaS programs are much more affordable to implement and manage than the traditional PC based software. Typically SaaS don’t require the company to purchase any new capital equipment to house the software. Normally, there isn’t a license per PC cost associated as SaaS programs typically have a per user minimal fee.
Opportunity exists for SaaS companies to gain their market share. However, the issue lies in how businesses will compete with one another, persuade prospects, and motivate their sales teams.
Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is the global leader of cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and platforms, and operates in over 70 nations. Salesforce ended its latest fiscal quarter on April 30, 2013, attaining $892M in revenues and earning -$67.7M in Net Income (Salesforce Investor Relations, 2013). The company is also highly recognized for successfully integrating a wide variety of social media application feeds into their enterprise-class CRM systems, creating an entirely new category of customer relationship platforms called Social CRM or SCRM (Salesforce Investor Relations, 2013). All Salesforce.com applications and platforms are delivered over the Internet using cloud computing technology at the foundational level with applications often configured using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This has provided Salesforce.com with several significant competitive advantages against on-premise enterprise software vendors including a completely different pricing model where customers only pay for the segment of the applications they use. Salesfroce.com customers often pay for their application sue out of the operating expense (OPEX) budgets, which individual line-of-business managers often have direct control over. This flexibility in spending options, along with speed of implementation, has earned Salesforce.com global market share leadership as shown in Figure 1.
The new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) will build a connected, collaborated, and integrated customer facing organization. CRM will have simplified features and a utilize cloud technology to support multiple departments within the organization. CRM users will be able to:
SaaS applications offer wide range of configuration options and development environments that allows clients to set up their own additions and modifications.
In order to establish a suitable CRM system and increase the success rate, understanding CRM processes is especially important. Building CRM system, there are many works need to do(). Firstly, the target customer market should be identified. Different customer strategies are focused on different target customer markets based on their profitability. Then, firms set customer objectives, for example, acquire customer satisfaction and loyalty. After that, the leaders and managers should support and commit the implementation of a CRM system. At the same time, when companies change their targets, a plan about changing
Software as a Service (SaaS), sometimes referred to as "on- demand software" is a software delivery model in which software and associated data are hosted on the cloud. SaaS is typically accessed via a web browser and is paid on a subscription basis, monthly or yearly as per requirement.
SaaS is becoming an increasingly prevalent delivery model as underlying technologies that support Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) mature and new developmental approaches, such as Ajax, become popular. SaaS is closely related to the ASP (application service provider) and On Demand Computing software delivery model
CRM systems can be used to deliver personalized services to users to develop long standing and advantageous to customer relationships. This personalization includes effective use of resources like filtering information to users, personalizing services to customers ,based on customer purchase history sales creating chance to cross-sell related services This approach to personalization offers immediate services and user interfaces and execution of multiple tasks remotely