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The On-demand or Hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software market has many solutions to choose from, with somewhat varying price ranges. So how do you know which CRM vendor is the best fit for your enterprise - and more importantly, are you sure you can afford it? With prices skyrocketing as high as $300.00 per user per month and far beyond, the bottom line is important when measuring a CRM investment, regardless of organization size. While large enterprises are looking at On-demand CRM & hosted ERP as the latest technologies to streamline sales and support processes and gain real-time access to data that stretches across the entire enterprise, and are therefore not as price conscious, small to midsized businesses (SMBs) need to conserve their budgets.
So what does the hosted CRM market look like today? With roughly six (6) major hosted CRM software-as-a-service providers, finding the right one can be difficult and time-consuming. Just when you think you've found the right provider for you, the inevitable up charges and hidden fees drive the price of the CRM far higher than your allotted budget which puts you right back at square one. Each provider has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as price points. Some have very straight forward pricing schemes, whereas others have lots of hidden costs and necessary 'extras' that make a seemingly good bargain end up being much more costly than expected.
There are many fine details which will have drastic impact on your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as well as Return on Investment (ROI) when choosing a CRM solution and cutting through the hype is not easy. The first thing to determine when examining all the different solutions in the market is your main Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) needs. This document will outline some of the common misunderstandings and price pitfalls that SMBs and large enterprises alike can easily fall into.
Cutting Through the hype of On-demand CRM
The wording on some CRM vendors' web sites is outlandish and many times downright untrue. This is a constant source of frustration for those of us who have limited time and budget to spend on cutting through the bull. Some CRM vendors cross the line when it comes to marketing their brand. Examples of CRM companies using the Dalai Lama in a ?planned' advertising campaign without anyone's approval might be a distasteful publicity stunt but it doesn't perpetuate untruths like using words like ?unlimited' to refer to, well, ?not unlimited'.Unfortunately, many SMBs don't have the budget to do the proper due diligence necessary to get to the bottom line.
Read the fine print to see if there is a user limit cap on your CRM software. Often CRM vendors will have ridiculously low users allowed in a certain edition or version of the CRM software. Once your business grows (like CRM is supposed to help you do) then you get penalized with a crazy price hike, even if your software needs haven't changed. Unfortunately it's the small businesses that fall into this trap most often. Small businesses are lured to hosted CRM as an inexpensive taste of enterprise CRM and jump on the lowest end solution without checking the cost consequences of growing their business. Once they hire a few employees, they are rudely awakened by the skyrocketed price. It is not uncommon to see the price of your CRM service jump by over five to six times the current cost. This is often too much to take and the business is forced to leave that CRM vendor and go with another vendor which takes more time and more money.
What Business Functionality do you Require?
There are two main areas to consider when evaluating a hosted service to automate business process across the enterprise: CRM and ERP.
A duck is not a duck...Too often the word CRM is hijacked by contact management software companies or software to help manage your support processes. True CRM solutions should handle Sales, Marketing and Support management and automation. Make sure you aren't paying too much for a hosted software service that only deals with one of the three. To integrate each of the separate pieces after the fact can drain your budget quickly.
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