Growing Acceptance of SaaS Is Good News for CXM
nimbly adjust campaign strategies to increase marketing effectiveness and impact revenue. Today, some marketers are accepting cloud as their go-to, preferred delivery model for marketing solutions, including CXM.
With the demands that CXM places on marketing departments to be agile in order to respond to customers in real time and to analyze customer data, it is critical for brands to incorporate cloud-based technologies into their CXM strategies if they haven't already. Following are three reasons why.
Economies of Scale
Since the purpose of CXM is to understand customers better and engage with them more effectively, organizations want to focus their time and resources on this goal. Adopting solutions that require IT departments to spend huge amounts of time and money implementing and maintaining the solutions would be counterproductive. By nature, cloud is "on demand," meaning it is available as a utility, so companies pay only for what they use. Also, it is available almost from the time it is contracted, and implementation costs are kept in check. The limited amount of time required for implementing and maintaining a cloud-based solution for CXM means less draw against the revenue benefits realized from CXM efforts and, therefore, greater ROI—a goal of every marketing department that wants to move forward in a post-recessionary economy.
Ease of Collaboration
Because the cloud is Internet-based, organizations are able to distribute applications hosted in the cloud with ease. This means organizations with employees in multiple locations are better able to get applications out to the users who need them. For marketers, this ease of distribution provides real-time access at any time, from any device, to the information they need to understand, create, manage, and deliver contextually relevant customer experiences that drive better marketing decisions, e-commerce success, and long-term customer engagement.
Facilitation of Globalization and Localization
Studies have shown that while a vast majority of Internet users do not speak English, significant numbers of Fortune 500 companies in many industries (airlines, auto manufacturers, consumer banks, and investment banks being the exceptions) fail to provide support in more than one or two languages. This is an obvious breakdown in the customer experience. To avoid this, marketers should utilize technology solutions that enable the delivery of content across languages for new markets in near real time. Implementing localization solutions that are part of an overall cloud solution offers the expediency and flexibility organizations need to execute in real time.
The more affordable, efficient, and flexible delivery model that cloud provides for CXM solutions enables companies to put a focus on customer data and language/culture sooner, which translates into improved customer experience and ROI. This means cloud is not only the future of CXM—it is the "here and now" as well.
Joe Stanhope is the senior vice president of strategy at SDL.
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