Advantages of Hosted CRM Applications for Small Businesses

CRM applications meant for small businesses are designed in a way that they incur minimum costs but at the same time considerably increase productivity and thus gather customer loyalty in the process. These solutions greatly benefit small businesses even if they have limited resources. They are designed in a manner to take care of multiple business needs.

A hosted CRM solution for small businesses focuses on the automation of crucial business processes in order to gain an insight into different interactions between the company and the consumer. Business executives can thus understand customer requirements easily and therefore deliver their services in quick time. This automatically leads to customer satisfaction and increases the goodwill of the company. Customer retention is an important aspect of any business and it is much more cost effective when compared to customer acquisition. A satisfied customer base also helps one to make valuable associations and thu s helps to promote company services to a similar section of the masses.
A CRM solution specifically meant for small businesses has a positive impact as far as productivity is concerned and also helps to reduce costs substantially. These equip businesses with SFA or Sales Force Automation tools, marketing management and comprehensive customer service tools. By generating a storehouse of crucial customer data and information that spans all aspects of customer life cycle, the solution helps to demarcate areas that require immediate attention of the organisation. This implies that the latter can take the right course of action in time and thus save itself and its employees from an impending crisis.

Through a hosted CRM, the organisation hosts its CRM or customer relationship management on different servers through the Internet. It offers convenient, flexible as well as cost effective solutions to businesses that lack the traditional IT resources. A hosted CRM implies that there is no requirement for installation, software upgrade is sues and hardware compatibility that is normally associated with the purchase and management of the CRM systems that are traditionally used. In case of a hosted solution, the upgrades, maintenance, system management and backups are all offered by the vendor.

The operation costs are often factored in and thus these CRM deployments cost considerably less. These also reduce the Total Cost of Ownership or the TCO considerably by opting for a subscription model. Companies, on their part, have to subscribe to the service either on an annual or on a monthly basis and make the payment accordingly. Therefore, the cost of a hosted CRM application is much less than an in-house deployment.

A hosted CRM solution also offers greater customisation benefits and multiple features. Companies can add the features that they require and therefore do not have to keep features that they do not need. The addition of particular features requires the companies to subscribe to a new module instead of configuring, loading or purchasing brand new software.

A hosted CRM application can be accessed from any part of the world over the Internet. It offers instant access, irrespective of the location of the users.