A question in the minds of many businesses these days is: Should we move our business computing operations to the cloud, or should we “stay on the ground?” What are the benefits? What are the risks? Is it safe? Is it cost-effective?
Research has found that the decision for any business to move IT operations to the cloud centers around CRM—primarily because prospect and customer information comprises much of the data storage for a large number of companies.
If your are seriously considering moving your CRM—and overall IT operations—to the cloud there are a number of important issues to evaluate.
Chapter 1. How Secure is a Cloud CRM Solution?
When considering a cloud CRM solution—or a move to the cloud in general—many companies still have a concern over security. Despite these concerns, the move to the cloud continues to grow. What is the truth of the matter?
Chapter 2. How Safe is Your Data?
With data being potentially stored off-shore, potential data ownership issues, and even concerns over safely transferring data, concern over data safety certainly isn’t a minor issue. But as with other cloud CRM concerns, it can be seen that as long as you do you research and make sure to clarify certain aspects of your cloud CRM service agreement, these concerns can be alleviated with relative ease.
Chapter 3. Should You Worry About Service and Performance Levels?
In today’s highly competitive business environment, the last thing a company needs to worry about is the sales force not being able to instantly save to or access data from CRM. Hence a common concern about moving to a cloud CRM is the worry about poor cloud service, slow performance, and outages or interruptions.
Chapter 4. Cost Benefits
Part of the debate over the move to a cloud CRM solution centers around costs. Since data hosting costs comprise a significant portion of any company’s budget, it well behooves an organization to research this point thoroughly and learn the whole truth of the matter: is it more cost-effective to retain data resources on-site, or to move to the cloud?
Chapter 5. Scalability: A Crucial Advantage for a Cloud CRM Solution
If you’re in business, one of your primary objectives is, of course, to grow. As you do, you’ll need your computing resources to keep up: processing speed for larger amounts of data, increased storage space, and applications that can keep up with the demand. It is in this realm that a cloud CRM solution can be of major benefit.
Chapter 6. How Customizable is Your Cloud CRM Solution?
One concern that can come up in deciding on whether or not to move to a cloud CRM solution is, “Will we be able to customize CRM?” It’s a valid concern; a CRM solution should be as tailored to a company as a suit would be customized to the wearer. With CRM, there truly is no “one size fits all”—despite the approach of many traditional CRM developers.
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