Hosted CRM for Small Business

Hosted CRM for Small Business

Hosted CRM is Customer Relationship Management software delivered as a service over the Internet. Small businesses can derive significant benefits from implementing a CRM strategy and tools. CRM is a customer-centric strategy that builds a business through increased customer loyalty. A CRM solution's productivity and efficiency benefits allow value-conscious small businesses to serve more customers using fewer resources.

Up to now, the costs of traditional CRM systems has outweighed the benefits. Hosted CRM systems reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by offloading the burden of deploying software, owning servers and employing dedicated IT staff from the customer to the CRM supplier.

Hosted CRM is an example of the SaaS (Software as a Service) concept. Traditional software deployments require server software and/or client PC software, the PC's and servers themselves, and the staff resources to install and maintain both the hardware and the software. Hosted CRM requires only a browser-equipped PC with a broadband Internet connection. All the functionality and the benefits of a traditional CRM application are served over the Internet.

Hosted CRM eliminates the installation; hardware compatibility and software upgrade issues usually associated with purchasing and managing traditional CRM systems. In a Hosted CRM deployment, all maintenance, backups, upgrades and system management are the responsibility of the Hosted CRM vendor. With operation costs taken into account, hosted CRM implementations cost less, can be implemented sooner and deliver a faster return on investment.

Hosted CRM is a flexible solution that allows a small business to subscribe to only the features they need, when they need them. This "pay as you go" model enables a small business to adapt a Hosted CRM solution to their needs. Hosted CRM dramatically reduces the time associated with new technology adoption. Typically, a new feature can be enabled online, and becomes available to the end-user after their next login. Hosted CRM solutions are location- and computer-independent, so small business CRM users are free to use their CRM tools anywhere, any time.