Still Solving Business Problems with Software? Try Services

You have heard the battle cries: “Software is dead” and “everything is moving to the web!” These are the mantras of the fast growing providers of “on-demand” software solutions. As the on-demand providers have evolved so has the technology, and with proper strategy and integration the Enterprise has finally arrived at the revolution. Corporate IT departments have now started delivering their own applications “on-demand”.

One of the leaders in software as a service (SaaS), has been Salesforce.com. Offering a customer relationship management solution delivered via the Internet with per-user subscription pricing they are becoming a leader penetrating the enterprise with an on-demand solution. Other major software providers, Microsoft, Siebel (now owned by Oracle) and recently Google, have also entered this arena, giving even more legitimacy to the trend.

Three case studies below illustrate how companies have benefited from this type of leading edge use of SaaS technology in sales, marketing, and customer support.

Case Study No 1: A custom executive briefing centre management application for a Fortune 500 manufacturer of networking hardware and software

The company needed a new application to manage the operations of its world-class Executive Briefing Centre (EBC). The centre’s 1400 briefings per year serve as forums for connecting sales reps and executives with the company’s most valuable customers. Acumen Solutions built a hybrid application for this company, and as a result of this custom application critical meetings between their executives and customers are efficiently organised, tracked, and executed via a powerful web-based on-demand environment. This has saved them a great deal in time, money and scheduling resources and has raised their profile as a state-of-the-art business partner.

Case Study 2: A “Know Your Customer Form” for a large global financial services company

The company needed to manage a customer account structure that was different from the standard structure in their on-demand CRM system (Salesforce.com in this case). Acumen Solutions built custom objects and related them to standard out-of-the-box Salesforce.com objects.

As a result this custom application satisfied usability, user adoption and legal compliance requirements through a highly-efficient customer account management process within Salesforce.com. This saved the company a great in time and resources previously devoted to documenting compliance efforts.

Case Study No 3: A My Messages Solution for a Fortune 500 internet auction site

For compliance and security reasons, the company required a custom solution to the standard on demand CRM email functionality. Email traffic needed to be routed through the company’s proprietary My Messages network as opposed to the service provider’s email servers.

Acumen Solutions created custom-built AJAX-based forms, and integrated them within the User Interface of the company’s on-demand CRM application for a seamless user experience.

The company can now control email deliverability to its online merchants, and can track outbound email correspondence directly through their online CRM solution in adherence with compliance and security requirements. This approach also solves their compliance needs, saving them significant time and money for the enterprise.

By having a “service” approach to development and by using the new technology tools available today (eg Salesforce.com’s Apex language, SOA and Ajax), suddenly the Enterprise can build, customise, integrate, deploy, and manage virtually any custom application on-demand for its corporate users often in a matter of weeks not months. And that delivers smiles all around.

Acumen Solutions UK Ltd is a business and technology consulting firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC Specialising in innovative technology solutions for Customer Relationship Management, Supplier Relationship Management, Enterprise Data Management, Data Centre Solutions, Risk Management and Compliance and Systems Development and Integration.