Should You Move Your CRM To Cloud?

It seems like everything is hosted in cloud nowadays – from enterprise application to school curricular everything has been shifted to virtualized space to improve information accessibility. We have become more used to in being able to access information from anywhere, anytime. CRM is an important enterprise application and hosting the software in cloud is becoming a popular proposition with businesses. Cloud CRM ensures availability of updated information round the clock. But before you start exploring nuances of cloud CRM you must ask yourself the most important question, whether or not it will help improving your customer service.

Cloud CRM is just a metaphor which implies that the customer data stored is available over the internet instead of local storage server. But along with this there are certain other benefits of adopting cloud solution for CRM software such as – scalability, flexibility, security, agility, availability etc.

Cloud CRM is essentially offered as SaaS (software as a service) solution but it can be hosted in company’s very own private cloud as well depending upon size and requirement of the company. Nonetheless, adoption of cloud CRM solution needs careful evaluation of what you can achieve through it and also the limitations you may encounter.

Currently, every possible nature of cloud solution is abounding around us encouraged by the low cost of services. The cloud CRM market is expanding and during 2020, 40% of the solutions implemented were SaaS based. But not all institutions are suitable to adopt cloud solutions and for some the cost advantages didn’t translate into improved functionality, especially, for a company that have already invested heavily into building IT infrastructure and deployed resources in managing private database.

Adoption of cloud CRM also remains an obstacle in highly regulated industries such as – healthcare, banking and government agencies. Uploading sensitive data in a cloud CRM that is hosted in a shared platform exposes the data to potential hacking threats.

Organizations that strive to exercise greater control over its data might not also be comfortable in hosting data in cloud CRM platform.

On the other hand, cloud applying to CRM can create an improved operation platform. Businesses that are looking to lower their IT expenses might benefit from adopting cloud solution. The responsibility of managing the infrastructure and software for web based CRM lies with the service provider. Providing updated version of the application is also a responsibility of the hosting company.

Cloud CRM solutions are accessed over the web browsers and don’t require the support of internal server. Organizations, especially, small businesses looking for simple CRM solution, constitute the ideal buyer market for cloud based CRM application.

Cloud offers better solution for companies,

• That want the flexibility of being able to up-scale or downsize its technical capacities rapidly. Since the services provided through cloud are provision based it can be adjusted fast with changing user requirements.
• Have remote workforce and needs control and monitoring of their working.
• That rely on the support of social media to be able to engage its customers better.
• That don’t have effective data backup plan.
• Want to reduce dependency over its IT department.

The greatest advantage of hosting CRM on cloud, however, is that it allows organizations become proactive instead being reactive to customer requirements. It helps created a unified platform that facilitates weaving of all – sales, marketing and customer services department in single thread. Data portability enabled executives to access data across platforms in understanding customer requirements and to reach out to them with more customized solutions.

Cloud-based relationship manager software allowed integration of the software tool with social media to help companies leverage the power of the new communicative channel. Cloud CRM solutions are capturing customer details through profile updates and status updates and enabled organizations to directly interact with its customers using the data garnered. The data gleaned is applied to customer intelligence in order to make the organization more customers oriented.

Introduction of cloud is reordering the CRM market. With the introduction of BYOD system and general shift towards mobile devices cloud adoption in CRM systems has further accelerated.

Customer data hosted in cloud is accessible over internet enabled handheld devices such as – iPads, and tablets. It is expected that by 2021 around 30% of organizations would have transited to mobile devices over desktop solutions. The mobile CRM application market is to see a growth rate of 500 percent over its current market share. Experts hope that there will be around 1200 mobile CRM apps in the market by 2022.

However, with respect to the staggering growth rate of cloud hosting of enterprise applications the success rate is moderate. In a rush to become the early bird in offering cloud solutions many vendors aren’t making enough investment in creating a solid infrastructure to host applications. As a result, issues related to subpar applications, outage, security breaches, and backup complaints are rampant. Customers, therefore, needs to be careful in choosing right cloud CRM solution.