The unreasonablemen had this post looking at a case study of a 1000 seat Salesforce implementation here in New Zealand. One of the most interesting comments was this one;
…companies going through the process of buying CRM spend so much linear time on requirements, RFP and data management/ migrations that when it comes to implementation the business demands an outcome in a timeframe that means SaaS is the only option left
Which begs some questions about life in an enterprise environment (and bear in mind here that I’ve never been employed by a corporate so my take is very much an outside perspective). It would seem that a number of traditional large enterprises spend so much time assessing, RFPing, justifying and reporting, that their actual decisions tend to become a little sub-optimal.
It seems that reporting of a decision tends to be seen as important (or more so) than the decision itself which calls into question some serious agility and efficiency issues.
The other major concern highlighted by the case study (and a concern both from a business and a SaaS perspective) is this;
…the business led approach significantly annoyed the IT department (there’s an understatement). So when it came to integrating SF into other systems they’ve made life very difficult.
Anyone spot a threatened empire mentality here. Walled gardens are a less than optimum situation when nimbleness, best-proactive and agility are the aims.