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A leading British construction company switched 1,800 users over to Google Apps on May 2nd, becoming the largest
live deployment in the UK so far for Google’s enterprise applications suite. In
a phone interview this morning, Rob Ramsay, director of IT at Taylor Woodrow, firmly refuted the allegations reported here
yesterday that Google applications aren’t fit for enterprise use.

Since implementing the CRM SaaS solution, beginning
in 2005, Equifax has achieved a number of important benefits:

Productivity gains. The company estimates that the time needed to
complete sales forecasts has been reduced by 90%, with greater accuracy. And the
amount of management time necessary to gather and verify sales data has been
reduced by 50 person-hours per month.

Quick time-to-value. The initial rollout to 400 users was
completed in 60 days, compared with an estimated 12 months that would have been
required for installing an equivalent on-premise CRM solution.

Short payback period. The initial implementation of the solution
in Latin America showed a payback period of 10 months.

Incremental profits. Equifax sales and profits are growing
rapidly. Although not all of the growth can be attributed to the CRM solution,
the company believes that 5% of its year-over-year profit growth can be ascribed
to CRM due to internal productivity benefits.

High ROI. Equifax estimates that the ROI from its CRM SaaS solution is 350% annually.

“We had 10 types of [payroll] systems as a result of acquisitions. To get
basic information, it was nearly impossible,” he recalled. “Some did payroll
with [an outsource provider]. Some did it on their own. We had no visibility of
any of this information. Plus, we were paying a lot of money to [outsource
payroll].”

The second-largest U.S. marine supply retail chain, Boater’s World needed to
improve its communication with trading partners and vendors, O’Hern says. That
meant its computers needed to talk to partners’ computers through the process of
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

O’Hern says Boater’s World had EDI connections with about 50 of the 300-plus
vendors in its supply chain, but lacked the ability to expand the use of the
technology because of the toll it would take on the chain’s internal data
processing resources. “We were struggling to add vendors,” he says, “because of
the amount of time that it takes to go through the testing, configuration and
certification process with each vendor.”

The overall cost per hire has been reduced by 60 per cent since the SaaS
system was introduced because the creation of candidate shortlists and reviews
for hiring managers is easier and the candidate is engaged with the business
throughout the recruitment process.

"… many customers are eager for the shift because they're frustrated by the
traditional cycle of buying a software license, paying for a service contract
and then having to buy upgrades. Many customers believe they would have more
control over the relationship if they simply paid monthly fees that could be
switched to another vendor if the first failed to perform."

"Ownership costs are typically less — as much as 30% lower for a typical CRM
installation, according to McKinsey & Co analysis. Costs should drop even
faster for commodity services such as e-mail and messaging, which may soon be
offered at prices so low that the traditional licensing model will be
uneconomical."

Key Findings






• Business-to-business (B2B) customer service centers generally are good
  candidates for SaaS CRM solutions due to lower call volumes and limited workflow
  requirements.
  
• Most industries looking for SaaS providers will find their choices limited,
  unless there is a high threshold of risk acceptance (for example, from mergers
  and acquisitions, a lack of development tools and an absence of industry best
  practices).
  
• Few consultancies and system integrators are willing and able to offer a
  SaaS solution.
  
• Application providers with a heritage in client/server on-premises software
  will remain less agile in offering SaaS solutions that integrate easily with
  their on-premises solutions.


Recommendations






• Recommendations to users:
  
  
  
  • B2B customer service centers seeking to migrate from legacy solutions should
    evaluate SaaS solutions now.
    
  • Technical support centers seeking SaaS solutions must demand that vendors
    demonstrate, through references, their ability to handle tasks such as depot
    repair, parts management and return logistics.
    
  • Low-volume customer service centers of low complexity should consider SaaS
    offerings in their shortlists.
  
  
• Recommendations to vendors:
  
  
  
  • Application providers with a heritage in client/server moving into SaaS must
    carefully train the marketing team on the long-term strategy of selling and
    maintaining on-premises and SaaS software.
    
  • SaaS CRM vendors in the customer service space must develop deeper ties with
    system integrators and a range of telephony vendors

The bulk of the company’s profit comes from selling to corporations, which
unlike consumers may be slower to adapt to a system in which proprietary data is
not stored in corporate-owned data centers.