Why IT based on Cloud Computing ?

In today’s sales environment for any competitive organization, account managers must use a software package called a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to prospect and understand their client’s needs and wants.

CRM and Cloud Computing 

This software is essentially a complex database used to store important records about existing customers as well as potential sales leads. Some of the information stored about these contacts includes their geographical locations or territories, the types of products and/or services that the contact is interested in, and other pertinent data that can be used in the different stages that make up the sales process.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a version of this type of sales software would typically be a packaged solution installed directly onto each individual personal computer in a company. But over the past few years, with the explosion of cheap bandwidth and server technology as well as the burgeoning open source movement, companies are gravitating towards a sales database package that is not managed on an individual machine but hosted upon a server and viewed entirely through an internet browser.

The result is that sales oriented organizations have the ability to access secured customer data from any computer terminal that has an internet connection.

One such company that provides this type of CRM technology is Australia’s Insightful Solutions, which uses an open source software platform called SugarCRM that is customized for its individual clients’ needs.

SugarCRM allows individual sales people to keep their sales contacts organized just like an Outlook calendar on steroids: they have all the requisite sales information at their fingertips so that while on a sales call or at a meeting, they know exactly what their client’s needs are by using sophisticated data reporting software.

SugarCRM offers a host of sales features, like the ability to run projection reports as well as to perform marketing campaigns via an integrated mass emailing function that even allows reporting on whether or not a potential prospect opened a particular sales email or not.

The analytical functions within the SugarCRM solution allow an organization's sales managers unprecedented access to their individual sales teams’ statistics and goals. A manager has access to all the information available to each of his reports to offer clues as to which salespeople have the biggest potential sales lined up - all in real time.


The software also is fully configurable based on whatever products and or services the business is involved in. If you are selling automotive parts, for example, the critical information that is needed can be coded into the software so salespeople can seamlessly up-sell other products for the same car model, for instance, that the company has to offer their clients.

And of course, the biggest feature of Insightful’s software package is that it is connected to the cloud, which would allow a salesperson at an internet café in Shanghai, China to use the SugarCRM internet portal to gain information on how to approach a customer’s needs from Phoenix with whom he has a conference call in fifteen minutes to discuss a potentially big sale. How about that for globalization?

But globalization would not be what it is today if it were not for the huge technological leap that has been made in creating seamless technologies for which we rely on to get even the most simple office tasks completed. Companies like Australia’s Insightful use this to a distinct advantage. While part of what their business plan is all about is to perform customization of the internal workings for the SugarCRM software, where they make their money is on a per user basis and the support that they provide to the cloud. 

This concept is commonly known in the technology industry as the software as a service business model. Thus, Insightful does not charge a flat rate for their software; instead they understand the inner workings of cloud computing require a solution that has scalability. It allows sales organizations that use Insightful’s platform to work together with the company towards a common goal, which is to expand both of their businesses.

Insightful is simply a very good example of a small company that has successfully learned how to take advantage of cheap bandwidth for cloud performance, yet they are certainly not the most profitable or the most innovative in the CRM industry.