The Killer App for On-Demand CRM:
Multi-channel Customer Service

During the past two years, user adoption of access-anywhere, hosted solutions at both small and large enterprises significantly increased. IT departments continue to avoid the high cost and implementation times of traditional packaged software. IDC estimates that while the overall CRM market will grow from around $7.2 billion in 2003 to $11 billion by 2008, almost 80% of that growth will come from on-demand models.

A combination of market and business drivers has led to the on-demand boom. Many traditional enterprise software solutions are too complex, are difficult to deploy and customize, and harder still to update. Often many of the “custom tabs” are overkill for many users, and it is just not worth the effort (and cost) to do another big-bang roll-out. Customization and integration is a huge time sink, so is having to make “major release” upgrades.

The on-demand model offers organizations and users:

• Access Anywhere - The Internet allows companies to implement virtual call centers, support distributed marketing groups, and offer more convenient access to account information to remote sales and service personnel, all from any browser.
• Simplicity - Most enterprise users of on-demand solutions rate ease-of-use and simplified access among their top reasons for adopting - and continuing to use their on-demand applications.
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership - The overhead related to configuring, updating, managing, and supporting enterprise applications (what ABG has termed the "management tax") has become a tremendous burden on IT. The pay-per-use model, managed services, and automatic upgrades offered by on-demand models breaks this cycle and brings significant economic benefits to an organization.