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The SMB sector in India is expected to account for a major portion of the IT spending in the country. Large IT vendors are beginning to offer custom-made applications intended to meet the requirements of the SMBs in India. SAP will be launching ‘Business One’ on January 23, 2006 in India. The solution requires between two to four weeks for implementation and costs less than Indian Rupees 1 million.

There are about 20,000 companies in the SMB segment in India and by 2008, the market for SMB-related IT solutions will be around Indian Rupees 7 billion. SAP Business One offers an intuitive user interface, data management, and operational support. The solution supports SMBs in their drive to compete with larger companies by providing the latest management control tools and greater insight into sales activities. newindpress.com says:

Oracle India also has made clear that mid-sized companies are a key focus area for it in India. Keeping in line with the strategy to provide the consumer with business value, the company has launched the Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition, for SMBs.

Go to: IT vendors churn out solutions for SMBs

Microsoft is providing free samples of the code and technical information required for making its Outlook client the centralized graphical user interface (GUI) for the CRM applications that it has developed. The codes were developed as a part of Project Elixir, which was conceived in July 2002. Case Study on the project available here, source code available here. computerworld.com says:

The result of the project is an add-in to Outlook called Customer Explorer that allows salespeople to access all accounts, activities and opportunities stored in various CRM applications through one interface, O’Brien said.

Go to: Microsoft offers free Elixir for unified CRM GUI

Cerillion Technologies, which is a convergent billing specialist, has delivered its CRM, Billing and Mediation solution for Caudwell Communications Ltd. The turnkey delivery involved the implementation of CRM Plus, Revenue Manager and Mediator products, which are a part of the pre-integrated Cerillion suite. The new solution will enable Caudwell to deliver its Carrier Pre-Select (CPS) Broadband and other services to its customers all over the United Kingdom. bobsguide.com says:

The system also supports BT’s Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) provisioning which is critical for CPS providers needing to provide a complete telephony solution to their customers.

Go to: Caudwell Communications Implements Cerillion Solution

Salesnet is an on-demand CRM solution that helps managers to acquire insight into the sales trends and thus makes business more predictable. Salesnet provides an activity-based workflow for capturing the best practices of the most successful salesmen so that the rest of the team can follow them.

The solution also offers a communication document library that facilitates communication between the sales and marketing teams. On-demand reporting, business trending, dashboards, etc are some of the other features present in this solution. The contact, account, and opportunity management capabilities offered by the solution enable salespeople to convert more leads into business and generate revenues.

Autotask is a web-based applications suite that provides a single database of information that can be tapped into by every employee of the company. Its multiple integrated modules include CRM, project management, client service, time tracking, and billing. These modules can be accessed from any location connected by the Internet.

Autotask offers a high degree of configurability and can provide support across several categories of business broadly covered by IT services, software services, consulting and professional services, and other services not included in the above categories.

Pfizer intends to tackle counterfeiting of its product, Viagra, by deploying RFID tags on each bottle of Viagra. rfidjournal.com says:

Pfizer sells five different stock-keeping units (SKUs) of Viagra, which total several million units each year in the United States.

Go to: Pfizer Using RFID to Fight Fake Viagra

Microsoft CRM 3.0 offers the best performance with Microsoft Exchange Server. This is because the product has been developed and tested in that environment. This does not mean that Microsoft CRM 3.0 cannot be deployed without Exchange. It can be done.

Usually, large organizations using Lotus Notes or Oracle or small companies that outsource email or have it delivered in the form of a POP3/SMTP solution go for the CRM solution without the exchange server, either standalone or Small Business Server.

Microsoft CRM 3.0 without the Exchange server does not support the Outlook client. Unlike earlier versions of Microsoft CRM, version 3.0 does not allow emails to be promoted to the CRM application.

Key factors driving small businesses toward hosted CRM include fast and easy deployment, less strain on the I.T departments, overall savings. Over the last five years, companies with 250-1000 employees have been gradually adopting hosted CRM and have been able to develop their business processes slowly around the hosted applications.

Hosted CRM offers an alternative to the high cost of ownership associated with in-house deployment. Software and hardware upgrades, maintenance, etc add to the operating costs, which SMBs can ill-afford. According to a recent study by AMR Research, 45% of SMBs are using hosted CRM services and 40% of the SMBs intend to deploy a hosted service in one form or another.

SMBs also benefit from the ease with which MS Office applications can work with hosted CRM services and now with Microsoft launching Microsoft CRM 3.0, SMBs have the option of working with the Office interface that they are already familiar with. newsfactor.com says:

One factor in a hosted system’s favor is turn-around time. CRM projects often need quick results to meet specific marketing goals.

Go to: Small-Business CRM: Hosted or In-House?

Salesforce.com experienced another outage of its hosted CRM application service in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. According to Bruce Francis, V.P, Corporate Strategy, the interruption on January 5, 2006 did not cause any major customer issues. It is still not known if the outage is in any way related to the database problem that occurred on December 20, 05′.

Salesforce.com uses Oracle Databases for running its CRM applications and competitors are raising doubts over the ability of Salesforce.com to scale, given that the company registered significant growth in 2005.

Select Comfort is in the process of deploying a Siebel analytics solution. Select Comfort has 400 stores and revenues of around $ 690 million. The company chose Siebel because of its user friendly interface, speedy report generating capabilities, and the promise by Oracle that the Oracle CRM and ERP suites will be integrated with the Siebel solution.