Summary
Whether it's Oracle with Project Fusion or SAP with NetWeaver, SOA comes in many different names and flavors, but its goal is always the same-to make a company's IT department more flexible to business processes and changing market conditions. "If vendors are serious about SOA, in theory it could make integration cheaper and easier," [Rob Bois] says. "SOA promises to give enterprises the IT flexibility they've always sought, and to make the consumption of best-of-breed solutions...
As big businesses enter phase 2 (and for some, phase 3) of their varying CRM initiative, these tips will refine the advance: 1. Align the front office before integrating with the back office. 2. Determine what business processes influence how the firm interacts with customers. 3. Determine data flow. 4. Understand your IT context. 5. Monitor employee behavior and performance prior to selecting the system to identify which business processes can benefit the most. 6. Have a firm understanding of your current IT infrastructure and where you plan to go before making any decisions about service oriented architecture. 7. Look to leverage certain best-of-breed solutions that are warranted by a strong business case and that will enhance key segments of your CRM infrastructure. 8. Ask for analytics. 9. Adopt a hybrid approach to allow a sales force to leverage the easy-access capabilities of a Web-based SFA solution. 10. Put the user first.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Enlightened Enterprise
1 ALIGN THE FRONT OFFICE BEFORE INTEGRATING WITH THE BACK OFFICE
Integrating CRM systems to supply chain management (SCM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions has recently become the goal of many enterprise IT departments. While giving a salesperson the ability to furnish a customer with time-to-promise information for an order is great, making sure that sales is aware of what marketing campaigns are generating leads and notifying call centers of what sales engagements are under way is better. "Integration to the back office isn't the biggest challenge right now. Companies are already doing this," says Rob Bois, research director at AMR Research. "Inte...See the full content of this document
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