Gartner: 30 Prozent der Investitionen für Kundendienst und Anwendungssupport wird bis 2012 über SaaS-Modelle geleistet

Gartner expects a similar drop in customer experience scores from midsize businesses. They're a stronger target for SaaS offerings, and they rarely use ESPs for business consulting skills.

Mr Maoz said that many projects that involve complex customer service contact centers are reported to be "on hold" until better references are available from the large enterprise application vendors that are in the process of releasing a new generation of their products. However, he said that SaaS is the deployment model of choice for an increasing number of projects. Gartner predicts that all forms of SaaS-delivered customer service applications in the call centre will grow by more than 20 per cent per year through 2012, and this will deliver significant savings. By 2012, 30 per cent of new customer service and support application investments will be through the SaaS model.

Because SaaS applications lack sophistication in BPM and process design, and due to the absence of ESPs offering business process advice, the growing spread of SaaS CRM applications threatens CRM efforts. "There will be significant savings in infrastructure and resource costs in migrating to SaaS, but to put that money to work in customer process improvements, careful performance measurement of 'before' and 'after' project spending will need to be performed," Mr Maoz said. "If this does not happen, then the savings will be shortsighted, as they will not improve the relationship with the end customer."

In a difficult economic climate, it stands to reason that many businesses will make similar choices and choose not to measure the benefits of the SaaS model. Gartner's advice to organisations deploying SaaS for CRM is to ask the software solution provider for its CRM process credentials and those of its ESP partners.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report "SaaS CRM Reduces Costs and Use of Consultants." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=778215&subref=simplesearch.

Mr Maoz is providing additional analysis determine the applicability of SaaS for delivering CRM applications at the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2009 taking place 3-4 March in London, UK. Additional information is available at www.europe.gartner.com/crm.

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