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What are the top CRM solutions for seamlessly integrating with disparate legacy systems?
I'm assisting a company with evaluating whether they need to implement a CRM solution and they are primarily running JD Edwards and also have some home grown solutions that were developed to meet specific departmental data needs. I am trying to obtain a list of the top CRM vendors that have the capability to integrate with existing systems as opposed to replacing them. In addition, I would also like to obtain definitions of basic CRM functionality that I can use to educate internal customers. Any feedback would be much appreciated as I am presently drowning in information, none of which is exaxtly on point!
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Pretty much any system that provides Web Services and/or REST API's can integrate with existing systems and http://www.focus.com/ugr/research/crm/how-pick-right-crm-helpdesk-bpm-vendor/ includes the following list of well established systems:
NetSuite: http://www.netsuite.com
SalesForce: http://www.SalesForce.com
EnterpriseWizard: http://www.enterprisewizard.com
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com
Microsoft: http://crm.dynamics.com
Siebel: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/siebel/index.htm
Right Now Technologies: http://www.rightnow.com
SAP: http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/crm/index.epx
They all have adequate API's, so in principal any of them could work, but in practice some may be much harder to integrate with than others. The reason is that you will probably need to create custom data structures in the CRM system to map the data coming from JD Edwards. It is much easier to create, maintain and access custom data structures in some systems than others.
The best way forward is to write up a spec that describes what data you need to integrate in what direction and what the JD Edwards API will look like, then ask them to provide fixed-price bids for the entire implementation, including all the integration work.
I emphasize the point about providing a clear spec and getting a firm bid in the above paper, but it is even more critical when dealing with a system integration project because the costs can be huge and JD Edwards is a very flexible system, so it is very unlikely that any of them will have exactly what you want by default. Choose the wrong system and system integration costs could well get into 7 figures.
One point to consider is whether IT Security will allow you to use a hosted solution that needs to integrate with such a critical piece of infrastructure. If not, you will have to exclude NetSuite and SalesForce from the above list.
Good luck! If you can avoid committing yourself to paying anything until you are sure that the solution will work, you will not get burned.
Rather than just saying which CRM platform can connect to legacy systems, I would first look at the architecture and the possibilities of these legacy applications to be 'exposed' to other systems.
When I worked for Attachmate, I made mainframe data and application logic (very important as these encapsulate the accumulated business rules) as web services.
The next would be to implement an Enterprise Service Bus (this is what we did at BEA Systems - now Oracle) - which can be thought of as a communications backbone. You would then attach your CRM system to this backbone for pulling data in and updating your legacy applications in an agnostic way (you don't have to connect onto the old system and learn how it functions). This type of approach is referred to as a Service-Oriented Architecture.
Another approach is to do application integration such as by embedding the screens or though screenscraping into the CRM system. This can be likened to having a 'window' show up in the CRM system that shows the old application. Corizon has an interesting solution in that respect.
With regards to training, you'll need to be more specific as to which roles you are aiming at and what level of knowledge they have.
Best,
Mark
I don't know the details of the company you are working with, nor the stage of your investigation, but would it be reasonable to suggest that this is an ideal time to take an overview of the company's processes and see how the processes can be optimized before you look at the technologies involved?
As mentioned above, most enterprise CRM solutions are robust enough to be integrated through APIs or customization. But it's important to start with "what kind of reports do we need?" and "how can we best operate our business" rather than "how do we use the software we already have?"
Again, I don't know the details of your situation, but when you say "home grown solutions that were developed to meet specific departmental data needs... to integrate with existing systems as opposed to replacing them", it sounds like the focus is on making the technology work more so than making the business work better. I hope the forest isn't getting lost for the trees, as they say.
How did it go? What happened?
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