4 frequently asked questions about cloud based CRM, now answered

Today being on Cloud is not an option but a necessity.

Hence, when the option to go on Cloud or stay on premise arises, there will always be a battle and a list of pros and cons which will help the company take some crucial decisions. Over here, we are trying to address the elephant in the room – what are the first concerns that one gets when going Cloud.

1. Is it necessary to be on Cloud ?

• Simply because today businesses are happening on the move.

• There are even two – tier or hybrid software available which provide the company the ease to manage multiple locations and branches at one time and on one platform.

• With the advent of Internet and Cloud and eCommerce, a customer today has 100s of options for the same product. This is making organizations are more focused towards customer service and product differentiation because of perfectly competitive market. This is where Cloud based system have important because it gives the sales person and the company enough flexibility for accessing the data in a much faster way compared to an in-house system.

2. How CRM on a Cloud can be beneficial for the Organization?

• Since the data is saved on cloud, the marketing and sales team can access the data whenever required, for example on the go to a client meeting or planning a marketing campaign to introduce season offers.

• It helps in quick ATP (availability to promise) check in CRM when integrating with an ERP system even if the person is sitting at another client premises still he can access the system and confirm the customer of the product availability without any delay. Over here, the data from inventory management system is flowing easily in the CRM and helping the Sales person sitting in front of the customer to close the deal faster.

• It helps in accessing crucial data and reports even if you are travelling or not in office. These strategic data are secured and will help the management to take actions studying them when required. Today it is not only the employees but also the and to keep up in such competing times, you need a CRM software which needs to act as a catalyst to your growth story.

3. What would be the data security?

• It’s true that thinking of Cloud, one has security concerns regarding the confidential company and customer data as compared to an in-house system, but a lot of Cloud CRM are hosted in Azure platform which is inertly secure by itself.

• If you still are not convinced, you can speak to your CRM vendor to apply different levels of security, encryption, identity management and approval levels so that the data and employee mapping can help keep your data secure.

4. What would be the Cost to go on Cloud?

• Compared to in-house CRM, Cloud CRM will always be cheaper. However, you will need to customize some work for the solution to fit your business perfectly, while at the same time, being economical.

• The fluctuation in costing depends on many topographies like your requirement according to business process, let’s say you have a business of insurance, then your main focus would be documents in the form of PDF or photographs, and for downloading these documents or saving the documents against the details of the customer, your cloud provider needs to provide you that much amount of storage space. Other allocation which needs to be taken care for costing are maintenance of the data or bandwidth fees and other charges, based on these requirements cloud provider may provide you the costing. However, you can negotiate further.

• Over – customization is not recommended in any case since they will delay the project and also increase the costing.

• A lot of CRM, Cloud or on premise, have some common basic features which is enough to get started with. Hence, if you are still in two minds about moving to Cloud, you can get a standard pack and evaluate the performance for a considerable low cost.

To know more about how can a Cloud CRM Software help you, write to Sage Software Solutions Pvt Ltd at sales@sagesoftware.co.in for a free consultation.