390 Part Three Key System Applications for the Digital Age INTERACTIVE SESSION: TECHNOLOGY CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT HEADS TO THE CLOUD Salesforce.com is the most successful enterprise- reports and dashboards monitoring key perfor- scale software as a service (SaaS) and the undis- mance indicators, sales calls, and sales volume. The puted global leader in cloud-based customer rela- Wall Street Journal, Pitney Bowes, Kimberly-Clark, tionship management (CRM) systems. Users can and Starbucks are among Salesforce's other large access Salesforce applications anywhere through an corporate CRM users. Internet-enabled mobile device or a connected com- Not to be outdone, established on-premise enter- puter. Subscriptions start as low as $15 per user per prise software companies such as Oracle have month for the pared-down Group version for small moved into cloud software services Pricing starts at sales and marketing teams, with monthly subscrip- $70 per month per user. Oracle's CRM on Demand tions for large enterprises ranging from $65-$250 per system has many capabilities, including embedded user. tools for forecasting and analytics and interactive Salesforce has over 100,000 customers. Small dashboards. Subscribers are able to use these tools businesses find the on-demand model especially to answer questions such as "How efficient is your appealing because there are no large up-front sales effort?" or "How much are your customers hardware and software investments or lengthy imple- spending?" mentations on corporate computer systems. Fireclay GRT Hotels & Resorts, a leading hotel group in Tile, a 37-employee environmentally friendly sus- South India with 10 hotels, used Oracle CRM on tainable tile manufacturer, adopted Salesforce and Demand to create a centralized CRM system for all realized multiple benefits. Salesforce's e-mail and of its properties. The system makes it possible for Web-to-lead capabilities helped the company quadru- all the hotels in the group to share customer data, ple new sales leads. (Web-to-lead automatically adds such as room and rate preferences, and to create leads collected from the Web to the company's mas- unified marketing programs that eliminate unnec- ter database). A task feature automatically generates essary price competition between the company's specific tasks based on the type of lead (architect, hotels. GKT believes that by making customer contractor, dealer, or homeowner) and the stage in behavior data available for forecasting sales and by the sales process. The system automates customer creating more targeted marketing campaigns, the service functions including order confirmations, fol- CRM system has increased productivity about 25 low-up customer satisfaction surveys, and shipping percent. Managers are able to monitor the number notifications of customer calls that employees answer each Salesforce's social tools enable Fireclay to compete month regarding bookings and general hotel infor- successfully against large flooring manufacturers and mation to identify underperformers. GRT manage- other custom tile producers by providing superior ment believes that using a hosted CRM service with customer service. The company uses Salesforce.com a monthly fee costs 65 percent less than if it had to maintain customer profiles, so its sales, service, purchased and maintained its own CRM software. and production teams have complete customer Moreover, Oracle's centralized, secure Web-based views as soon as leads come in from the Web. CRM application ensures that confidential data, such Fireclay's internal social network based on Salesforce as promotion plans, cannot be removed by GRT Chatter helps employees track orders and work employees when they leave the organization. closely together to meet customer needs. Customer While traditional enterprise software vendors satisfaction has increased 90 percent. like Oracle are using their market-leading position But Salesforce.com also appeals to large to penetrate the cloud-based application market, companies. Dr. Pepper Snapple Group adopted newcomers such as SugarCRM have found suc- Salesforce CRM to replace an outmoded Excel appli- cess, even among larger companies. Thomas Cook cation that required extensive manual data input to France, a subsidiary of the worldwide Thomas Cook compile reports on more than 50 beverage brands Group Travel ple, is an example. Thomas Cook and to track sales performance against objectives France has 1,700 employees and is the second largest in real time. The system now tracks field activities travel company in France, providing leisure travel for more than 10,000 accounts, with automated programs for groups of 15 travelers. The company Chapter 9 Achieving Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy: Enterprise Applications 391 is able to distinguish itself among competitors and drive immediate business activities and also analyze Internet travel services by providing an outstand- high-level business issues. ing customer experience. Thomas Cook France had Not all companies experience gains of that mag- been using pen and paper to track most of its calls nitude, and cloud computing does have drawbacks. and other customer interactions, so its customer data Many companies are concerned about maintaining were fragmented and redundant, and could not be control of their data and security. Although cloud used by management to analyze agent productivity computing companies are prepared to handle these and revenue opportunities. issues, availability assurances and service level SugarCRM monthly subscriptions range from agreements are not always available. Companies that $30-$100 per user. Thomas Cook France found manage their CRM apps with a cloud infrastructure SugarCRM to be a user-friendly yet scalable sys- have no guarantees that their data will be available at tem that could be customized, deployed quickly, all times, or even that the provider will still exist in and managed without a large internal information the future, although CRM vendors have taken great systems staff. With the help of Synolia consultants, pains to address these issues. Thomas Cook had its SugarCRM system up and run- ning within 15 days. Cook's agents are able to man- Sources: "Salesforce.com Inc. 10-K Report," March 9, 2012; Ziff Davis,'SMB On Demand CRM Comparison Guide, January 2012; age leads with integration and importation into their "Flreclay Heats Up Its Small Business as a Social Enterprise, system. The system allows for team and role-based www.salesforce.com, accessed July 17, 2012; "GET Hotels & Resorts access and the ability to attach documents to con- Increases Productivity by 25%, Improves Customer Service and tacts. In addition, Thomas Cook France is using the Resource Allocation with Centralized CRM System," www.oracle. com, May 1, 2012; www.sugarcrm.com, accessed July 17, 2012; and CRM software for high-level outbound e-mail mar- Thomas Cook Begins a Successful CRM Voyage with SugarCRM keting efforts, FAQ modules, and dashboards that and Synolia,' SugarCRM, 2010. CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What types of companies are most likely to adopt cloud-based CRM software services? Why? What companies might not be well-suited for this type of software? 2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud-based enterprise applications? 3. What management, organization, and technology issues should be addressed in deciding whether to use a conventional CRM system versus a cloud-based version