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Executive Summary
CRM buyers have a wealth of deployment options available to them, providing unprecedented flexibility, costefficiency and business value. They can opt for a traditional on-premise packaged software installation, subscribe to one of the new breed of on-demand services delivered via the Internet, host their own on-demand solution or deploy a combination of those approaches. This gives IT organizations the power to fine-tune CRM deployments to match their needs, strategic objectives and the budgets of business users. But with choice comes complexity. Not only must IT managers carefully analyze their business scenarios, they also must understand the strengths and weaknesses of the available products. There are many new hosted solutions, but most don't integrate well with the market-leading packaged solutions or with legacy systems. These so-called software-as-a-service (SaaS) products also have a wide range of capabilities for customization and standards compliance. Vendor stability and reliability also are important issues. With consolidation inevitable in the market, users need to choose vendors wisely. This white paper describes and analyzes the four most popular deployment scenarios, then offers a guide to choosing a hybrid approach that best matches the needs of the business while delivering superior performance, application integration and functionality.
Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) has been one of the most compelling operational concepts of the past 15 years. Beginning with humble roots in sales force automation, CRM has expanded to include a wide range of tasks, analytics and engagement tactics that maximize the value of the customer relationship and contribute to sustainable revenue growth. Total CRM revenues reached $8.4 billion in 2006, up 7 percent from the previous year, according to Forrester Research. AMR Research, which includes a broader range of applications in its forecast, predicts that the market will grow from $8.6 billion in 2006 to $18 billion in 2010, a 21 percent compound annual growth rate. As CRM has expanded to encompass elements of collaboration and Web 2.0-style engagement, the software tools to support it have grown and become more diverse as well. Today, buyers have the luxury of choosing from a vast selection of products to help develop and nurture customer relationships. Broadly defined, CRM encompasses everything companies use to manage customer relationships, including capture and analysis of customer information and analytics to leverage that data toward better sales performance.
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