The Savvy CIO

Where are small businesses finding value in cloud computing?

A recently released report by Forrester Research sheds some light on the subject.

The top five business processes small businesses are moving to the cloud are:

1. Customer service and support
2. Sales force automation
3. Content management
4. Collaboration
5. Marketing automation

What’s to note? You can target THREE of these processes with ONE cloud solution.

Support (#1), sales (#2) and marketing (#5) are core functions of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems such as Salesforce.com, SugarCRM (which Highland Solutions provides), and a host of others. The ability of one solution to address three areas absolutely critical in a down economy should put a CRM on your radar, if it isn’t already there.

The reasons small businesses most often gave for their move to the cloud?

• Fast startup: Solutions were in place within days.
• Retain company focus: By tapping into outsourced expertise they stayed focused on their business.
• Funding: The cloud is pay as you go, as opposed to the large initial outlays for bringing a solution in house.

If you’re looking for solutions and systems in one of these areas, it could pay to take a serious look at cloud-based solutions. If you are considering or have deployed a cloud solution, share your questions or experience below.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on small business “MUST DOs” of choosing and implementing CRM, content management and collaboration cloud solutions. See our thoughts on moving to the cloud here and here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Cloud Computing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Software as a Service (SaaS), Strategy & Consulting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.