by Ben Woodhead
HONDA Australia's motorcycle and outboard motor business will introduce its first fully fledged customer relationship management system under a contract with Salesforce.com.
The hosted system will replace Honda Australia Motorcycles and Power Equipment's existing Lotus Notes customer database and will be integrated with other technology such as its voice over internet protocol phone system.
The unit's IT manager, Craig Bassett, said the $350 million a year concern would install Salesforce for 40 users in December and eventually increase the number using the platform to 50.
"The major reason for looking at Salesforce was to be able to understand our customers better," Mr Bassett said.
"We had disparate, decentralised databases of customer information all over the company and Salesforce is an opportunity to centralise that.
"We'll be better able to serve our customers and market to them. There's no point trying to market an off-road mini-bike to a 60-year-old.
"We want to understand what a customer may be interested in depending on age, where they live, what their interests are, and we haven't be able to do that."
Mr Bassett said the unit looked at a number of customer relationship management alternatives over the past two years and it had not started out with a clear preference for either a hosted or on-premises system.
However, he said, many big-name vendors quickly priced themselves out of the equation and that a hosted system offered the best value for money.
"When we did a matrix of the costs involved in in-house versus outsourced system, Salesforce came out on top," he said.
"Not in all areas, but in most."
The unit awarded Salesforce. com the contract in July and has been working through requirements testing and proofs of concept for the past two months ahead of the December production rollout.
Integrator Sqware Peg is handling installation of the system.
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