Summary: SMBs have taken to hosted CRM in a big way. SaaS has placed CRM within the budget of small business owners. If you own a small business but till now have not been able to achieve the desired results with converting sales leads, closing deals, marketing in a targeted manner, retaining customers, and acquiring new ones then you know that you need to look into a hosted CRM solution.

Start by narrowing the field. You will have a plethora of vendors to select from. A lot of these can be selected / eliminated outright based on their expertise in your vertical unless you are looking for a generic solution to test the CRM waters. Involve the users, managers, and customers in arriving at the list of probable vendors. This will enable you to consider vendors that offer you the right mix of functionalities for your business. Without an awareness of your precise requirements you could end up paying for a lot of surplus functionalities. 

Here are 8 things that you need to consider when selecting a hosted CRM solution –

1. Integration – Evaluate the vendor on his capability to integrate your existing business applications with the CRM solution. Easy integration can save a lot of data migration pains and will hasten the deployment process. Check if you need to purchase additional middleware or spend on extra coding.
2. Ask questions – Be informed about your needs so that when you sit with the vendor to discuss, you do not have only the vendor’s PowerPoint presentation and marketing talks to go by. Ask about delivery options and application features that will best fulfill your business requirements. A CRM packed with features is of no use to you if it cannot contribute in driving sales and reducing operating costs.
3. Vendor appropriateness – Apart from judging a vendor for his offerings it is important that you check whether he fits with the culture of your company. A SaaS solution is a radical thought in itself and depending on your state of preparedness you need a vendor who can work hand-in-hand with your team rather than someone who is not in sync with your speed of working or the level of your conservativeness.
4. Is there a lock-in period - Something that ties you to the vendor? How does it affect your plans to customize, integrate, and increase storage if need be. You may incur unexpected costs that may quickly multiply.
5. The right offering - Does your CRM offer you the applications that may be mission-critical to your business or is the offering just glorified contact management software that is making its pitch based on cost?
6. Data security - Find out who has actual control over your CRM data. The vendor needs to have adequate data encryption to prevent illegal and unauthorized access. Check in advance about the vendor’s capabilities to recover lost customer data in case there a server crash. Find out his capabilities and arrangements regarding redundancy.
7. Downtime - This can hurt your customer relationship. Check for the level of system uptime assured in the SLA. Obtain assurance regarding daily backups, performance guarantees, and any procedures that are required to ensure that your web-based CRM is available 24 X 7.
8. Scalability – Get to know if the CRM system can scale with ease; your user base is bound to grow as your business picks steam. Most web-based CRM offerings come in different sizes that cover all business sizes. Find out the cost considerations of moving on to editions that offer greater functionalities.