Is on-demand CRM better than an on-premise solution? - Yes

I laugh when I hear people express disdain for the benefits of on-demand software. On-demand has taken the IT industry by storm for eight years -- thousands of customers of all sizes are embracing the new model -- yet there are organizations that still insist it is a fad.

A typical question is: How do I know my data is secure? But how do you know your data is secure in the on-premise-based world -- other than hiring and maintaining a staff of security experts who need constant training on the latest issues and will eventually quit. Isn't it enough to know that global industry leaders are standardizing on-demand applications?

This should give smaller, less powerful organizations assurance that their data is safe. A common belief is: I can't integrate to on-demand systems. Why not? Well-designed, on-demand applications come with open APIs, which are far ahead of APIs that older, premise-based systems provide. On-demand APIs support industry standards, such as Simple Object Access Protocol and XML, and they support programming languages, such as AJAX. Most impressively, on-demand applications support their APIs indefinitely, so the upgrades that typically affect premise-based integrations are nonexistent in the on-demand world.

Another common belief is: On-demand applications lack functionality and aren't flexible. Gartner estimates that more than 50% of software functionality never gets used, so functionality can be overrated. More important, on-demand vendors know exactly what functionality their customers need, because their on-demand infrastructure lets them to monitor use and adoption of every nook and cranny of the application.

Therefore, on-demand vendors can give customers exactly what they'll use. And the term shelfware is no longer relevant. Here's another thing to consider about flexibility: Most changes that are made to on-demand applications are done through very intuitive, point-and-click, configuration screens. There is no need for a computer expert to change the application. And no need to maintain separate development and test environments to roll out those changes. In the premise-based world, these environments are necessary and expensive.