subject: Pivotal Crms 3-tier Architecture [print this page] ArchitectureThe Foundation of Low TCO ArchitectureThe Foundation of Low TCO
The purchasing landscape for CRM has changed radically in the past 12 months. Todays CRM buyer is looking for a product that is easy to buy; easy to deploy in a predictable timeframe, and will fit with the current and future business IT strategies. And because the majority of an organizations investment in license fees, configuration, customization, and training occur well before the software shows evidence of results, the price tag attached to a CRM implementation can seem very high.
Given the complex inter-dependence of typical enterprise technology environments, TCO can be a difficult metric to obtain for a single system. However, there are a few key abilities that are crucial in order to mitigate the risk of deploying CRM software, and a number of areas to focus on to reduce costs. These include customization, integration, deployment, usability, and upgrades.
Low TCO CRM Architecture
The informed CRM evaluator must take a balanced approach to evaluating both the application and the architecture when considering TCO. Ultimately, however, it is the CRM applications flexibility, scalability and deployability that will determine total cost of ownership as an organization adapts to its changing marketplace.
Pivotal CRM stands apart from other CRM software solutions in delivering a complete suite of CRM products built on a sensible technology foundation that drives low total ownership costs across the entire CRM lifecycle. Based on a Microsoft .NET foundation and embracing industry standards, the Pivotal CRM architecture ensures enterprises gain a flexible, scalable, and deployable solution for the richest levels of collaboration and interactivity to increase revenues, margins, and customer loyalty.
3-Tier Internet Architecture
When the Pivotal CRM team set out to architect a CRM solution for enterprises that delivers exceptionally low TCO, we created a 3-tier Internet application architecture with clear separation of the presentation services tier (user interface), business services tier (where business logic resides), and the data services tier (where customer data is kept separate from metadata).
This architecture enables organizations to save substantial time and resources by centralizing application customization, development, and maintenance at the middle tier. With graphical tools for customizing the look, feel, and functionality delivered at the presentation services tier, the business services tier, and the database services tier, changes to business logic can be made quickly and efficiently with relatively little impact on existing applications. And because there is no client software to install, the distribution of both application and data modifications to users, regardless of their location or access method, is streamlined.
The Pivotal CRM Approach to Customization
The Pivotal CRM solution maintains the highest level of customizability through our meta-data driven approach, and our open and flexible data model. These two characteristics of Pivotal CRM distinctlyand uniquelyaddress the business need of enterprises for ease of customization because:
Customizations are saved as metadata in the Business Module, not as code or rigid table extensions, and sent to users via the same technology used to synchronize Enterprise Data. As a result, all users are seamlessly updated regardless of their access method.
The Pivotal CRM Approach to Integration
At the heart of any CRM system is a consolidated data repository of critical customer, partner, and employee information. The integration challenge for enterprises is to share this CRM data with customer, employee, and partner data from other internal systems and departments; integrate databases that use distinct schemas; create composite applications that incorporate functionality from third parties; and, make data and business processes available and manageable across public networks.
In the face of all these challenges, customer integration goals generally include one or more of the following:
Making more sources of data available, despite a myriad of data formats and database systems;
Driving higher levels of productivity and automation through business process integration;
Offering users richer application functionality through application integration.
Application Integration via Web Services
The Pivotal CRM solutions 3-tier architecture is designed on the Microsoft .NET framework, which facilitates the ability of Pivotal CRM to integrate with and consume Web services. Pivotal CRM applications are inherently modular and expose various application elements.
Simple Web services typically are used to perform non-transactional information supplementation such as delivering news feeds, updating static information dashboards, providing additional company information, etc. More complex Web services have the ability to provide support for transactions, such as customer initiation and order fulfillment.
