SaaS CRM vs. CRM on premise for a diversified business

SaaS CRM vs. CRM on premise for a diversified business

How do you suggest implementing CRM software in an organization that has diversified business interests -- where the revenue generated varies greatly from one division to another? In this situation, would you suggest Software as a Service (SaaS) or on-premise CRM?

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This is a difficult question to answer without knowing more about your customer service, sales and marketing processes. If these are segmented by the line of business, I'm not sure there would be a compelling value to adopting a single Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM package across divisions. If these are leveraged across multiple lines of business, then a SaaS CRM deployment could be a great way to standardize processes and gain critical customer insights across divisions that likely have a heterogeneous set of legacy sales and support systems.

Knowing more about your customers would also be a key input to this decision. Are your customers segmented by line of business? Are your divisions B2C, B2B, or a mixture of both? What is your corporate vision for what it should be like for a customer to do business with a division, or do business across divisions? Unfortunately, without more information, the answer here could be SaaS, on-premise, or a hybrid combination of the two.

This was first published in January 2007