Catalysts Limited

With SAP and Oracle both keen to persuade their existing customers to upgrade their CRM suites there are signs of interesting developments away from the conventional software + platform set-up. The move to using Facebook for business communications and the growth of networking sites like LinkedIn are opening up a whole new area of CRM applications.

It seems that some early adopters of CRM applications are now realising that they may have bought with more enthusiasm than care. The beneficial effect is that customers are taking greater care with specifying their upgrade requirements. A recent comment suggested that too many businesses are running multiple instances of software in disparate enterprise systems and with poor data integration which has resulted in a fragmented view of the customer. And the new generation of open-source CRM applications will meet a need where enterprise users are improving their focus on how they collect, distribute and use the data.

An integral part of contemporary CRM development is the move away from conventionally installed software to software as a service (SaaS) where the applications are held on Internet servers. The company SpringCM have recently announced, for example, that they will be licensing their SaaS platform for application development. The company already says that businesses like Pitney Bowes and Ricoh have provided specialist applications to run within their CRM system.

More at: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/mgmt/8AA6373EE6D45678CC25754E0016548B