GMail Outage Raises Concerns About Hosted CRM Backups

CRM software experts have expressed their concerns about hosted CRM applications for the past few years. Even as modern web scripting makes hosted apps more desktop-like, their issues are with the challenges that CRM software vendors face when choosing an interoperability strategy.

From a programming point of view, some vendors prefer not to spend time on a feature that makes it easy for users to export data to a competitor's service. And for marketers and sales professionals, even hinting at the possibility of export functionality seems to feel wrong -- like you're bringing up the possibility of a failed implementation right from the start.

It's one thing to debate this issue in the wake of the Entellium fiasco. However, the need to ensure backups of both systems and data emerged recently when Google's GMail service experienced a four-hour outage. Business customers, who pay fees for additional features, were incensed. And critics of software as a service wondered aloud whether any provider could offer truly error-free service.

In my experience, it's better to think about when a vendor will experience an unexpected system failure -- not "if." Thinking this way puts an outage into perspective:

• What's your threshold for failure?
• How long could you run your business without a hosted CRM tool?
• How quickly could you migrate to a backup solution?
• How much extra are you willing to pay for a feature that you may never need?

While some vendors have made export functionality part of their sales pitch, others leave it up to you to ferret out the information. Based on advice from industry experts, here are some tips that can help you get over your fear of leaving data on the cloud.

• Learn how your team can backup and restore data from your hosted CRM software on a regular basis. A legitimate vendor will have some way to do this, even if it lacks official documentation.
• Ask for specific details about how a prospective hosted CRM vendor operates their servers, especially their backup systems.
• Make the right decision for the kind of business you operate. A mom-and-pop marketing agency does not always need the kind of redundancy as a bank.

Following these steps can reduce your stress level while opening up real opportunities to save money and to improve customer service.