Advantages of hosted CRM

Key factors driving small businesses toward hosted CRM include fast and easy deployment, less strain on the I.T departments, overall savings. Over the last five years, companies with 250-1000 employees have been gradually adopting hosted CRM and have been able to develop their business processes slowly around the hosted applications.

Hosted CRM offers an alternative to the high cost of ownership associated with in-house deployment. Software and hardware upgrades, maintenance, etc add to the operating costs, which SMBs can ill-afford. According to a recent study by AMR Research, 45% of SMBs are using hosted CRM services and 40% of the SMBs intend to deploy a hosted service in one form or another.

SMBs also benefit from the ease with which MS Office applications can work with hosted CRM services and now with Microsoft launching Microsoft CRM 3.0, SMBs have the option of working with the Office interface that they are already familiar with. newsfactor.com says:

One factor in a hosted system’s favor is turn-around time. CRM projects often need quick results to meet specific marketing goals.

Go to: Small-Business CRM: Hosted or In-House?