The Benefits of On-Demand and Desktop Integration

Last Updated on Monday, 18 June 2007 14:29 Written by Mohammad Reza Noruzi Saturday, 19 May 2007 18:23

Introduction: At first there are shown a few advantages of the on-demand model, compared to the traditional on-premise model. we are going to compare these two models and their advantages and benefits and their features then you yourself will choose the best model, you know in installing every Customer Relation ship Management (CRM)software you should survey all factors then select the better one, at the second part we will show you some Microsoft Office software details that help doing on CRM easily and effectively.

The Benefits of
On-Demand and Desktop
Integration

Mohammad Reza Noruzi

noruzi@pmir.com

Introduction:

At first there are shown a few advantages of the on-demand model, compared to the traditional on-premise model. we are going to compare these two models and their advantages and benefits and their features then you yourself will choose the best model, you know in installing every Customer Relation ship Management (CRM)software you should survey all factors then select the better one, at the second part we will show you some Microsoft Office software details that help doing on CRM easily and effectively.

Description:

Part one): The comparison between two models:

Unparalleled time to value. Sales forces implementations usually take less than a month and rarely exceed three months, compared to 12 months or longer with client/server software. According to a recent study by Triple Tree and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), on-demand deployments are 50 to 90 percent faster, with a total cost of ownership five to ten times less than installed software.
Less expensive initially—and in the long run. It’s easy to see why a multitenant, on-demand solution is much less expensive initially. There is no hardware to purchase, scale, and maintain, no operating systems, database servers, or application servers to install, no consultants and staff to manage it all, and no need for periodic upgrades.

Even more important, however, are the long-term savings. Gartner estimates that two thirds of IT time and budgets is spent on maintaining infrastructure and dealing with updates. That’s a thing of the past with the on-demand model.

On-demand deployments also have fewer hidden costs. A fully-loaded, five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) study for a 50-seat project considered several often hidden cost factors, ranging from needs analyses to internal downtime. This study showed the TCO of a premise-based solution to be 2.5 times as high as that of an on-demand solution.
Easy upgrades. Customers of on-demand applications benefit from instant deployment of new versions, which means the entire customer base is always on the latest version. Since customizations and integrations are maintained through upgrades, change management discussions can focus on taking immediate advantage of the new features and innovations available with each release.
Better service delivery. Due to the on-demand model's tremendous economies of scale ,and we can provide higher service levels than the vast majority of companies can achieve on their own. We use the best technologies, policies, and procedures to ensure security at the facilities, application, and network level; to ensure maximum uptime and continuous availability; and to provide a performance record we’re proud of.
Better scalability. Successful businesses are continually changing and growing: Employee growth, transaction growth, the launching of new products and services, mergers and acquisitions, or any number of business events can dramatically and suddenly alter business needs.

Solutions from large enterprise software vendors are expensive to scale because of the complexity and cost of scaling each layer of the hardware and software stacks, which often require messy system replacements and data migrations. Customer-specific systems developed with J2EE, .NET, or open source tools are similarly difficult to scale because of such infrastructure issues and changing or unforeseen business requirements.
Easier to customize. Users of on-premise solutions have no choice but to wait weeks or months for even minor modifications to their applications, and in some cases their requests are never met at all. The Sales force application was designed from the beginning to make performing basic customizations to the user interface and underlying data objects easy, so that even business users could customize in minutes, without programming. Without the burden of fulfilling constant requests for minor customizations, IT is free to concentrate on performing more advanced customizations, such as associating specific behavior with objects that can be triggered by a wide range of system events.
Users are more satisfied and productive. A major reason on-premise deployments often fail is because of low user adoption—data that’s cluttered or difficult to get to quickly results in user resistance. Sales force's award-winning, easy-to-use interface has resulted in the highest user adoption rates in the industry.
Easier for administrators. Administrators can tailor processes and define how data is viewed for different departments and work groups, while ensuring that users can access only that data for which they are authorized. Sales force's ease of use extends to its administration functions. In fact, Forrester named Sales force the "#1 On-Demand CRM Solution for Administration."
Nurturing true value and innovation. By eliminating many of the problems related to traditional application development, the on-demand model frees developers to focus on developing solutions that deliver real business value. Salesforce.com supports developers with a host of on-demand development tools—including a point-and-click customization tool, toolkits for the most popular development environments, and the upcoming Apex programming language—Apex Code—as well as the Apex Developer Network. The Apex community has grown rapidly, resulting in hundreds of innovative solutions that are made available to customers via the AppExchange directory,

Part two)Desktop Integration and its benefits: To make users more productive Salesforce is tightly integrated with popular Microsoft applications including Outlook, Word, Excel, and of course Windows. Outlook Edition: Outlook Edition is a free plug-in which you can install by visiting setup | personal setup | desktop integration. This powerful utility performs several important functions that help Sales force and Outlook work hand-in hand together.

Email Integration: Add emails from Outlook to a Contact or Lead record inside Sales force by clicking on the “Add to Sales force” that appears in your toolbar. It will look up the contact based upon an email match and give you the option of associating it with the opportunity or case. This helps you catalog important emails and provides a tremendous boost to effective collaboration.
Address Book: When sending an email from Outlook you can look up a contact from inside Sales force and add them to the To Line of your email.
Synch your Contacts and Calendar: Outlook Edition allows you to select which contacts and calendar events you want to synch with Sales force. Synching can be automated at scheduled intervals and a dynamic icon indicates whether a record is up-to-date.

Auto vCard: Auto vCard is a free AppExchange component that allows you to create an Outlook contact from the contact record inside Sales force. It takes less than 2 minutes to set up and will be a big hit with your users. Export to Excel: Any report inside of Sales force can be exported to excel with the click of a button. Excel Integration with Office Edition: Office Edition is a free plug-in which you can install by visiting setup | personal setup | desktop integration. This tool creates a new menu in Excel that allows you to import data from a report in Sales force as well as refresh data. Many customers will create one worksheet containing their source data and one with their calculations and charts. This allows them to refresh their Sales force data with a single click without having to re-write their spreadsheets. Excel Integration with the Excel Connector: The Excel Connector is a hugely popular open source tool which takes Office Edition a step further by allowing for bi-directional synching. If you’re importing data or doing data cleanup, it’s well worth taking a look at. Mail Merge: For creating form letters, proposals and quotes, Sales force offers mail merge functionality. To create a mail merge document visit setup | administration setup | communication templates. Note that if you are trying to print mailing labels, your best bet is often to export the data to excel, create your mail merge document in Word, and then point it to the excel file as your source data. Sales Folder: A Sales force Partner by the name of Invisible CRM is doing some exciting stuff around Office Integration. A tool of theirs called Sales Folder allows you to drag and drop files from Windows or Outlook, adding them to the attachments section in Sales force. For example, you might want to associate a contract or a proposal with an opportunity record. Conclusion: With these reciprocal studying you will systematically improve your knowledge in usage of CRM terms, especially with applying the second part" desktop integration and its benefits" you will get more proficiency in CRM development. References: Related articles: