A recent survey conducted by Really Simple Systems, the UK's largest hosted CRM vendor, has revealed that small and medium sized enterprises are embracing hosted applications at a faster rate than ever. The annual survey questions SME business owners, directors, sales, marketing and IT managers, on their views of SaaS and the reliability of the products currently available in the market.
From a sample of 466 respondents, the majority from small and medium sized organizations with less than 50 employees, 62 percent report increased confidence in hosted applications between March 2009 and March 2010. This is mirrored by the 62 percent who agreed that hosted applications had been made a more attractive proposition by the current state of the economy.
The survey confirmed that hosted CRM continues to outshine ERP, Payroll, HR and Manufacturing as the preferred SaaS offering for SMEs. ERP, Payroll, HR and Manufacturing offerings have improved their penetration in the SME market but continue to lag behind. 67 percent of respondents reported that they are confident in hosted CRM with 41 percent actively using hosted CRM applications. Hosted ERP trails behind CRM with only 13 percent of respondents using ERP SaaS applications and only 39 percent reporting confidence in hosted ERP applications.
Hosted CRM has almost completely caught up with in-house CRM for SMEs, with 41 percent of respondents now using hosted applications as opposed to 42 percent using in-house CRM.
Outsourced CRM systems continue to prove unpopular with only 2.6 percent of respondents opting for this option and the number of respondents not using any CRM system stands at 14 percent, a one percent drop from the same time last year.
The survey also revealed that almost half of respondents feel as confident about the reliability, speed, data safety, and functionality of SaaS applications as they do with in-house offerings. This is indicative of the now almost identical usage of hosted and in-house CRM.
Furthermore, the research also showed that 37% of those questioned planned to spend more on IT in the next 12 months than they had done compared with the last 12 months.
More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com
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