Software, such as ‘Salesforce Automation Applications’, have, in the past, typically been offline applications due to the need for them to be used remotely. However, such applications struggled to meet the business process requirements of many sales forces in that they failed to share data and business processes between team members, they relied on the sales person to connect at regular periods before a case could be processed and they carried a high maintenance overhead. As a result, online solutions, like Salesforce.com, have become extremely successful and have now rolled out to major institutions across the globe.
However, due to the heavy legislative burden, the UK Financial Services has its own unique characteristics and a belief that ‘generic’ industry applications such as Salesforce would not work. There is still much debate as to whether online solutions will take off in Financial Services, buta quick review of the market shows that most vendors have moved away from the supply of pure offline solutions to either pure online solutions (e.g. IntelliFlo), or more often a hybrid solution, where the client database is online but the advisor can ‘check out’ a client to work on offline.
In studying the uptake of these solutions, it is interesting to note that the main advocate of the online world – IntelliFlo – is also arguably one of the most successful of the current vendors, with clients such as The Money Portal and Thinc having recently signed up to use their solution. Traditionally their success came from the sales of their Back Office system, but this has extended as they have enhanced their Front Office capability, with many of the organisations also using their online sales tools too.
Indeed, despite some detractors, the world appears to be going online with more and more recognising the benefits of a SaaS model.
- Microsoft have stated that the release of Windows after Version 7 (next major update) will be last ‘thick OS’
- Google Chrome is the foundation for a browser-based operating system
- Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Apollo, AJAX etc, are extending UI and operation on local machine
- What were once desktop-only apps, are migrating online, eg Adobe Photoshop
- The Web 2.0 approach promotes application mashing, which is difficult to achieve with thick apps
In financial services the debate still runs on… and on… with some big offline vendors sticking to their principles and pushing the need for offline working. At the same time, the online vendors dismiss these prospects/clients who call for offline tools as old fashioned. In fairness, the debate is still a valid one and those vendors that offer both options still have a market edge in many cases. The diagram below illustrates the arguments from both sides. Who wins the argument will be decided case-by-case according to business models and cultures within the organizations.
