Why Cowen and Co. Moved Into The Cloud
Sales reps now get reports 60% faster, Cowan says
June 1, 2009
Keeping track of work it performs for customers is key to the success of Cowen and Company.
So the New York- based provider of investment banking, sales and trading and equity research services for corporations and institutional investors has replaced an aging program for managing relationships with customers it developed in-house, with one that it uses "on demand."
In so doing, its salespeople now get reports 60 percent faster, even though the new customer relationship management (CRM) application is hosted on someone else's computers.
Cowen, in effect, has moved the administration of its interactions with customers into the "cloud," now using software that is installed, maintained and updated at a distant data center and provided as a service by a vendor, Salesforce.com.
Using software as a service means Cowen purchases and pays for the use of the software as it's needed. The company is not locked into costly fixed-fee licenses.
By offloading the administration to the vendor's servers, the company has reduced demands on its in-house servers, saving money and freeing them up for other uses.
The firm's figures it has saved 25 percent on operating and maintenance costs, in the three years since it made the move.
But, most importantly, improved functionality means Cowen can better determine what is important to its clients, in such industries as healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace and defense. This is crucial to the firm's success.
"The nature of our business is that we need to track our customers, coordinate our efforts in working with customers, and create a [clear] picture of our relationship with each of our customers," says chief information officer Daniel Flax.
The firm had been using its own similar application for several years. But that application was costly to maintain, difficult to upgrade and lacked the functionality of some newer software on the market for managing relationships with customers.
The newer applications, for instance, allow integration with finance, publishing and other corporate systems and more extensive reporting on sales efforts and client activity, Flax says.
Cowen replaced its homegrown application in 2006 with a service called CRM Unlimited Edition. The firm chose the Salesforce.com offering mainly because it met the needs of Cowen's employees, in terms of functionality, ease of use and reliability, and the firm's goals for tracking information about customers' activities with Cowen, Flax says.
Also, Cowen managers wanted a platform that they could easily adapt as the firm's needs changed.
CRM Unlimited Edition provides customer information to 250 Cowen employees who work directly with customers. These include research analysts and research salespeople, as well as traders and management personnel.
Using the on-demand application, a salesperson can quickly get a PDF detailing the relationship with a customer, including all interactions between the customer and the various parts of Cowen with whom the customer interacts.
The Salesforce service is available via the Web, meaning users can gain access to data regardless of where they're working from.
"That gives us much more flexibility," Flax says. "Our users can more easily get access to the tools they need even if they're on the road."
With the previous application, workers could only get access via a virtual private network and from Cowen-issued laptops, smartphones and other devices.
