Roles of Systems and Application Term Paper

Like many companies, we're also customizing Salesforce.coms' applications to match exactly what we need in terms of being able to track specific customization orders from customers. We're also working with Salesforce.com to create more integration points to our hand-coded systems as well, using the Apex programming language. AMR Research (2007) has mentioned Apex in their cited research, specifically on the point of ensuring upgrade paths possible using Salesforce.com main components while customizing them with the Apex programming language as a key reason it departments are adopting Salesforce.com. This is in fact the reason our company chose salesforce.com and the SaaS platform as our CRM system, because we could quickly and easily customize it for our specific needs. Our it department spent the majority of the CRM budgets in the past trying to get our sales force and managers to use the systems in the first place. This is also a key finding from Dyche' (2002) and her finding that the majority if budgets for CRM implementations are spent on changing how people work and use the system, not necessarily on the software itself. This is certainly the case in our company as well. The decision to go with Salesforce.com within our company was also based on the fact that our senior financial managers looked at the cost of implementing the Oracle CRM system that is based on the Siebel software Oracle bought a few years ago. The decision to go with Salesforce.com was made because the pricing we received at $65 per user and the fact that Apex programming tools and support were free made the use of this SaaS-based application the most attractive. In addition, many members of our sales force don't have powerful laptops or home PCs, which would have been required to run the Oracle CRM client. Yet all of our sales force can reach the Internet, and many of them have previous experience using Salesforce.com software, which further added to the arguments for using the SaaS-based CRM application over the one that would need to be installed. All of these factors led to the development of a business case which showed that Salesforce.com was the best choice for our CRM system. According to industry experts, more and more companies are doing financial justification and ROI analysis of SaaS-based applications and choosing this class of application over the traditional licensed ones (Computer Business Review Online, 2006).

In terms of the future use of SaaS throughout our company, it's clear that this approach to delivering applications makes much sense for the way our departments are structured and how they work together. One part of the manufacturing division is piloting the development of entirely new build-to-order programs and processes in China, while another is looking at how tol create better supplier relationships in Indiana and Ohio. The need for being able to see what is happening in our manufacturing centers on a 24/7 basis is becoming critical. That's why I think the approach to using SaaS-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications is the way to go. As AMR Research Analyst Sweeney (2006) has mentioned, the era of SaaS-based ERP systems has arrived, and she specifically mentions NetSuite as one of the market leaders. Clearly for our company, the need for having global visibility throughout the entire production process makes SaaS-based ERP a potential approach to overcoming the limitations of licensed ERP applications that are quite expensive to upgrade, maintain and keep running.

References

AMR Research (2007) - Salesforce.com: Record Quarter, Momentum Strong Leading Up to Dreamforce. Thursday August 16, 2007. Laura McCaughey, Robert Bois. Boston, MA. Pages. 1 & 2.

Computer Business Review Online, (2006) - Gaining Value from Software as a Service. Computer Business Review Online Angela Eager. Accessed from the Internet on September 4, 2007:

http://www.cbronline.com/article_cbr.asp?guid=8B4B1CF1-D83A-45A5-856C-C391F2BD69F4

Dyche', Jill (2002) - the CRM Handbook. Addison-Wesley Pearson Education. ISBN. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. 2002.

Sweeney, Julie (2006) - Software as a Service in the ERP World. AMR Research. Boston, MA. June 22, 2006. Accessed from the Internet on September 4, 2007:

http://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.asp?pmillid=19553.....