So there is usually a reason a hosting company can offer cheap hosting. Most of the time it is because you are just communicating with a machine and bunch of automation scripts. Since the biggest expense of providing hosting services is the humans that have to interact with it. The IT staff and support call centers and subsequent training cost way more than the hardware infrastructures, so the lessof this they can provide the more profitable they can become. Another key factor is that the bigger they get the more they get the attention of hackers and thus are more susceptible to security threats since hackers know that the companies are trying to have less human interaction they know they can get away with more if they keep looking for ways to get in etc... well this forces the hosting providers to increase the limitations on what you can and cannot do so they can further reduce their liability and potential security risks across their systems. Well if you are a novice with little system admin skills and your needs are very basic perhaps this can be a worthy option if you have the patience for long tech support hold times and fell comfortable with WYSIWYG script execution user interfaces.  However, these restrictions and automations is not how the IT guys or developers supporting your project think or prefer to work. Most system admin's wan what is called shell access which gets right down to 1's and 0's with what are called command line executions. Most good admin's can get their way around the underbelly of a server in a mere fraction of the time required by slick user interfaces and the systems themselves can manage tasks equally as efficient.

If they are limited with access or have to wait long hold times to coordinate something with an under staffed call center and go through tier one techies that have to escalate the ticket to tier two support anyway... well you are going to find a frustrated system admin or developer with a bit of an attitude after a while. So let's do the math here... you get hosting for $10 - $15 cheaper ($120-200 per year) than the competition let's say... ok your IT guy/gal or developer bills at $50 per hr or more plus you end up having to interact with their frustration so it takes your time. Then you have to figure it is going to in most cases take them longer to accomplish many simple tasks, you may have to find technical workarounds given buy the security restrictions and any frustration is going to roll up hill and stir up everyone's blood pressure.

Starting to get the picture why this may not always be the best approach...?

I have worked with GoDaddy (I was even a reseller), BlueHost, SiteGround, Aplus and Aplus Dedicated Services and HostYourSite and many others. They all have similar issues and challenges and in our case it significantly interfered with our ability to respond quickly to our customers needs and provide the best possible value for supporting their technology investments. This is why we have made the choice to build our own hosting infrastructure around our service model so we can meet our promise of Better Support, Faster Innovations and Greater value for your investment. We are not trying to mass market our web hosting but rather work like a department designed to support your business goals and objectives.

A while back I worked as a developer for a company and the IT guy whom personally I liked but he admittedly did not understand the needs of my development team. So he kept imposing security restrictions and other measures that inhibited our ability to work efficiently and what he did not realize at the time was that what we were doing impacted many other aspects of the organization through dependencies on us completing our work on time and to a particular standard. While what he was doing on one hand was keeping the company safe and making his job easier he was actually on the other hand strangling our ability to make our deliverables, satisfy customers and generate new business. Not to mention that it drove the costs of development up considerably due to the lack thereof efficiency. He was not realizing that the reason he was there was to support our efforts ... we were not there to serve his. I could go on but it is not an uncommon type of dynamic in many organizations.

This is in effect what you are doing when you go with the cheep hosting solution thinking you are going to save money. We recently had a customer with a board mandate where they were required to have a different company host than support develop. So once the site was finished we whet to move it to their new host. This is usually a simple job that takes a couple hours depending on how big the site is and how long it takes to pass the files and wire it up to a new DB. The customer  chose the $9.99 special at a company with a glitzy marketing campaign and pretty WYSIWYG UI tools and as it has happened similar in the past... we encountered a number of issues determining that the new host would not be compatible with the technology they wanted us to put there. Ok so first we uploaded a file set and gave a DB dump so their IT guy could spent endless hours beating his head against the wall, so then he passes this back to us and we spent 5 hrs of billable time (frustrating billable time which should cost more don't you think J ) to determine this hosting environment was not going to be compatible. Granted this is a very big site with a tone of technical goodies but not very fun to be in this situation for anyone involved.

Now what if they got the "better" deal through purchasing a year up front ? What if they made the choice in the first place because they were already on a tight budget?  Where does that put all of us techies that worked our tails off now that the customer is feeling more pain and still without a solution? Well I think you get the picture here. They are surely not saving any money and none of us get a warm fuzzy out of the experience.

You will most likely, unless you have very specific security restrictions such as DoD contracting or Medical Services, be much better off, from an efficiency and cost savings perspective, by  outsourcing your hosting at a datacenter vs trying to manage tone yourself. I have a whole server cluster bought and paid for in the other room in my office and even with this I am saving tons of time and money by having our internal systems outsourced at the same data center we use for our customer solutions.

I know we charge a little more than our competitors for our hosting but we are not trying to compete on price but on value. The big difference with our approach is that we have built our server infrastructure to support what our customers and developers need, so we can respond efficiently with the specific platforms we service and support and keep the required investment in balance. We can still provide the highest level of security but you are getting metaphorically "the healthy home cooked cuisine and hospitality vs processed fast food from a drive up window". While the "fast food drive through" approach has its place it is not for everyone and it is very important that you weigh your options carefully before you make decisions for your solutions provider. If you are building your business on the web you need to have a much more reliable and responsive hosting and support infrastructure and personalized technical support.

Through our approach though it has take time and careful planning to achieve, we are now more than ever able to put focus on what is going to help you achieve the best results for your business, proactively respond to your needs with greater efficiency and deliver more value in service and advise.

I hope this little insight is useful when considering your hosting and I encourage you to go with value over price any day since in the end this decision with more than pay for itself in savings and peace of mind.

CN

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Customer relationship management - the managing of a relationship with the customer. A very simple concept as you look at it. Why arethere are many questions surrounding it? It is because this seemingly simple concept has changed the way the world does business with its customers. It has taken the most important aspect of business-the customer- and brought it to the forefront.

One of the misconceptions about CRM is that is a software solution but it is really much more of a business process and methodology supported by technology.

CRM Guru Paul Greenberg coins it this way "CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment" in his award winning book "CRM at the Speed of light".

With that said, having a good relationship with your customers is the key to any businesses success, survival, and growth. A customer may perceive the entire business as one single entity. But there are different employees in different roles and departments who work in synergy to enhance each customer experience. If you are going to build meaningful customer relationships and achieve any reasonable level of customer loyalty you need to make sure you understand the full dynamics of your customers, their organization and how you interact with them.

Though the strategy and philosophy elements have to be clarified prior to implementing the technology I am going to lean mostly from the software aspects in this article and how they are designed to map your strategy with the technical implementation.

Customer relationship management or CRBM software applications help you organize data efficiently and many offer advanced reporting capabilities and automations so you can have the right information at your fingertips for real-time analysis. This can help you get one step further and can give each employee, department, and manager access to a vast amount of customer information.

Important Aspects of a CRBM System

There are several key aspects of customer relationship management which are related to each other and play a key role in the outcome of the entire process.

1. Having good business to business (B2B) relationships is what helps deliver the eventual user experience with the end consumer or (B2C).  This means that managing the transactions and communications aspects of relationships with partners, suppliers and distributors or retail channels is paramount in how quickly end users or customers are able to be serviced and ultimately satisfied.
2. Real time Data Analysis: Business Intelligence is the backbone and benefit of the entire business management system. To effectively leverage the training, software and hardware investments required for effectively implementing any CRBM system, Customer and business management data needs to be analyzed, updated and combined with predictive analytics to plan out and strategize targeted marketing campaigns that respond to what your customers and their customers want, need and are not only asking for but are demanding from you.
3. Good Communication with Customers allows you to improve customer loyalty through building trust and it can help manage damage control in turbulent times. Customer interaction channels are a direct indicator of the success or failure of a CRM model and needs to be constantly monitored. A better business has fewer calls/emails, lesser escalations and a high customer satisfaction to dissatisfaction ratio. In addition improving your ability to respond faster and deliver results in shorter windows of time will lessen the chances your customers need to search else ware for solutions to problems that can be solved through your products or services.

There are several types and variations of CRM applications available in the market today and they all have strengths and weaknesses but in our search we have found that most Small to Mid-sized Businesses (SMB's) or also referred to as Small Business Enterprises (SME's) can benefit from solutions that originate from Open Source Technologies since this can give them the freedom to modify or customize features with a lower cost of entry. The leading contenders for this are the SugarCRM solution and the Infoathand CRBM system.

To get started I would recommend that you look at their product web sites and compare price points for not only the software but also the ongoing service, support and training required to successfully support your deployment and ongoing organizational needs.

They each offer free trials and if you have the technical expertise you can jump start the technology implementations rather seamlessly. However this is not the case with most small businesses and thus there has been a void for companies to provide professional support and training to help you get through the many choices and options available for mapping this software with your business processes and organizational strategies. This has opend the door for companies like CNP Integrations to provide professional support, training and consulting to help match the right technology for your organization.

In conclusion you must first get a good idea of what your business processes are and how you want to leverage technology to implement a system that centralizes your data, gives you the flexibility you want and is at a price point you can afford. Then you should review the available software and contact a company like CNP Integrations that can provide you with the professional services and advise required to implement your CRM program effectively.

One thing to keep in mind as you dig into this is that if you implement your CRM Strategy and accompanying technologies correctly you will not only get back your investment but you can actually significantly reduce overhead and improve efficiency through automating many of your business processes and getting real time information for making better decisions faster. On the flip side is that it is very easy to make decisions during the initial implementation phases of deploying CRM that can cause catastrophic failure and thus wasting a ton of time while costing you not only money but stirring up your organization and customer relationships in an unfavorable way.

For reference I highly recommend Paul Greenberg's book "CRM a the Speed of light" if you need consulting click here to get a whitepaper and to talk with someone that can give you good advice in your research

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I am sure you may find other reasons perhpas more relevent here in the US. However, below are 4 reasons shared by an associate in the UK.

"1. Hosting CRMAllows You to Streamline Your Resources Allocation

In recent studies, especially in the UK, it has been shown that companies using a hosted CRM Solution will usually use fewer resources than a comparable software counterpart. When you are using a web-based CRM instead of an offline CRM, everything will be accessible via the Internet. This placement means that while you may be using fewer resources, your small business CRM solution will be serving more customers. Using a hosted CRM solution has shown a positive effect on overall business growth and customer service standards.  This is because you are able to provide levels of customer service usually offered only by the larger corporations that have such a large customer service demand that they can justify the large cost of a large scale offline CRM solution.

2. Less Required Software Deployment with a Hosted CRM Solution

With traditional CRM solutions you would have to provide server software, client PC software. The PCs and servers that your small business would be using would need to be of a upgraded to properly run the software.  You would also be looking at the cost of hiring, training, and regularly employing staff to maintain and install the hardware and software for you.  Meanwhile, hosted CRM services require a simple PC and a high speed Internet connection. Having this kind of cost reduction means that you can have a smaller workforce and even have people working from home or in different countries where you are able to reduce you payroll bill.

3. A Web Based CRM Solution Reduces the Strain on Your IT Department

If you had your own internal hosted CRM then there would be many expensive elements required in order to build an efficient online CRM solution. One would also need to consider the burden of deploying the software which could take many months.  Beyond that, you would need to account for server costs, and employing a dedicated IT staff to make sure everything runs smoothly. With a setup like this it would not take many unfortunate events before you are wishing you had simply opted for a hosted customer relationship management service.

4. Requiring Less Equipment in Hosted Customer Relationship Management Services

If you take a look at the IT departments in the UK with companies not running a CRM solution, you will find old technology and often occupationally unnecessary equipment. You will find equipment such as: Oscilloscopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Signal Generators, Multi-meters, Network Analyzers, Logic Analyzers, Power Meters and Frequency Counters. Each of these equipments cost in the thousands when bought new and even then they will only be used when something goes wrong. "

Well... we have always offer hosted solutions but since we have reciently upgraded our "Cloud" we are realy ready to roll with ondemad delivery options. We just released last week (March 11th) our own brand for delivering hosted CRM with suport and training to meet the challenges of integrating offline or dispersed custopmer relationship systems into an easy to use and low cost of entry solution.

JomComCRM is a hosted integration and service bundle for developing Joomla CMS based Social Communities with Customer Relationship and eBusiness Management Tools. JomComCRM is here to meet the challenges of Small to Mid-sized Businesses (SMB's) looking to leverage and engage the powerful features of Web 2.0 Social Networking and eCommerce with integrated CRM. This powerful suite of web tools has everything you need as a platform to grow and manage your online business. CNP Integrations supports businesses and organizations using these software solutions by providing business training, consultancy, software implementation training, end-user training as well as end-user support. CNP Integrations also enables small businesses and medium-sized businesses to create value for their customers through the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). For more information feel free to get in touch with us at http://www.cnpintegrations.com/

CN

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