Many clients are hesitant when considering a hosted or cloud-based CRM solution. Many negative thoughts may arise…the company data is not resident, what about internet speed/outages, etc. However, there are more reasons than not to have a SAAS (software as a service) solution.

First of all , your company data, when hosted by a reputable firm like NetSuite or Salesforce.com, is actually more secure, why? It is the core business of the software vendor to keep data secure and non-corrupt. They have redundant data centers and high availability hardware to ensure reliability and availability. Why, because there are economies of scale when you have tens of thousands of users.

Cost is a primary driver. Having a full time (large) in-house IT staff, especially for a mid-market firm, is very expensive in both administrative and hardware/software costs. Employing a Cloud solution is basically ‘outsourcing’ part or all of your IT staff, so that you can focus on your core business, which is most likely not IT. The average cost savings is usually over 40% per year.

Lastly, the usability of a cloud based solution ensures high acceptance rate of the solution. One of the risks of implementing a CRM system is non-acceptance. Many sales people would still like to keep their data on a piece of paper or in MS Excel. By providing a tool to track leads and forecasts in the cloud, the company can make the sales person more productive, and make the company more productive. Web-based interfaces allows apps that make the salesperson’s admin job more interesting and less time consuming…can you say “iPhone app” to look up leads and notes on a customer?