Submission + - Outlook Shared Contacts List for a CRM, Bad Idea R (salesforce.com)
mikeken writes: I'm the sole "IT multitasker" for a small business in St. Paul. Currently, we use a relatively expensive CRM which integrates with our ERP to provide the sales employees with sales history. The problem with this is that the CRM is made to sit on our in-house servers and can only be accessed when someone is sitting at a desktop connected to our domain. Asking the sales people who are located throughout the country to use remote desktop is asking too much. After all it's the 21st century and things should be easier. Over holiday breaks, when the offices are closed, sales people occasionally need to get access to information in the CRM. During thanksgiving my boss decided he had enough and wants me to create a shared contacts list for outlook/exchange to replace our current CRM. My gut instinct is that this is a bad idea. Right? I would like to see what everyone's opinions and ideas are about this, as well as any known complications this may cause. Do I need to redirect my boss to a solution such as that at http://salesforce.com?
