A Study On The CRM-ASP Model For SMEs

In order to survive and develop in the fierce market competition day by day, more and more SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) are exploring actively to implement CRM. Developing CRM inhome will last long and be very expensive, which make most of SMEs difficult to afford. ASP(Application Service Provider) is generally thought of as a dominating model with which enterprises use software. ASPs set up a public IT platform to offer service of leasing for enterprises, which can not only improve the whole society IT investment efficiency, but also reduce IT investment risk of single enterprise. CRM is considered to be an ideal field of ASP application because of its characteristics of outside-oritented applicailton, distribution, movement etc. CRM-ASP model has got flourishing development in U.S.A. At the same time, the domestic market is still at the stage of teaching beginners. Obviously the market potential is wide, so we can say there is a good chance of CRM-ASP to SMEs and to IT companies who are trying to enter this market.The overall goal of this paper is to offer a systematic and deep analysis of business model to SMEs who prepare to select CRM-ASP products and to domestic IT companies related. To service this goal, the core of this research is to explore the feasibility of SMEs to implement CRM with ASP products from theoretic and practical point of view, and to explore how ASPs locate their application functions and satisfy SMEs' requests. This paper is formed by theoretical research and empirical research mainly.Chapter one, an introduction, make a brief explanation for the significance of selected title, current situation of relative research, research contents, method and innovation of the research, which give a total understanding of research background, research significance, research approach and course.Part I, a theoretical research, is the foundation of empirical research afterwards. Chapter two systemetically summarize the definition, technology, market situation of CRM, then make a detailed introduction to domestic and international representative CRM companies. Chapter three explains why SMEs need CRM, emphasize its strategic importance and all sorts of interests that SMEs will obtain from it. Chapterfour describes several key courses in which SMEs may implement CRM, such as setting up a unified CRM view, defining CRM demands, assessming the state of preparation etc. Chapter four then compares and analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of the two approaches, developing CRM inhome and outsoursing it to ASPs. The findings indicate outsoursing CRM to ASPs is a better choice to most SMEs. To support this conclusion, chapter five finds selecting ASP model has an advantage by defining and deviding ASP, describing ASP application and market situation, identifying its belefits and potential risks.The purpose of part I, the theoretical research, is to establish the association among CRM, SMEs and ASP model as much as possible, which is used to testify that it is feasible for SMEs to implement CRM with ASP model. Then the paper points out the question of empirical research: from the point of view of products and service offered actually, how ASPs effectively locate CRM functions and satisfy the requests of SMEs, and how much business value SMEs can abtain from selecting application service from ASPs. Part II, an empirical research is arranged to answer the above-mentioned questions by comparing and analyzing two current dominating CRM-ASP products: Upshot's Upshot and Salesforce.com's SPE.Empirical research in chapter six carry on a comparative study on the selected products from three aspects: commercial value, functions and key technology characteristics, and put the focal point on the two latter aspects with an object to offer a systematic supplement to fairly limited research on ASP especially from technology perspective nowadays. The result of the empirical study indicates that there is no a significant difference between two applications chosen, whether from technological characterist...