1. Does the system cover everyone's needs?

Most on-demand software is group-specific (Sales) and application-specific (Documents, CRM, Calendars, Email Management). 

But the fact is: everyone in the company must be sales-focused:

• Whether directly dealing with initiating and closing a sale

• Or recording the sale and servicing the clients. 

We can equip sales with great CRMs, but what about the after-sales process? What about communication with each other and our customers? What about:

• Customer enquiries and complaints?

• New leads that anyone in the company might have? 

• Developing a corporate customer history?

• Handling and tracking client projects? 

• Managing client files if we are a professional service business? 

• Storing customer's emails, Word documents, presentations and spreadsheets? 

• Centrally managing all our documents?

And what about order processing, to do and calendaring, time tracking, reporting and data queries, and all the other important functions?

You need more than a basic CRM to properly manage sales and service customers. Does the software cover them all in one cohesive package? 

Sales drives the business. Service sustains the business. So why equip only the sales team, when everyone could benefit from the software? Qasper not only assists in the direct sales process, but also helps manage the after-sales and service process by providing the tools each person in the sales, service and administrative process needs.

Keeping your existing customers happy is the best way to ensure future sales. Qasper's Help Desk is where customer issues can be recorded, assigned and tracked.

By having everyone involved in recording all the actions associated with customers, vendors, associates and others, you build a historical database that provides your business with a strong foundation for future planning and action.

Finding documents can be a nightmare in any business. Qasper's document manager centralizes document storage by providing easy access to qualified personnel. Our comprehensive search functions can quickly locate any document.

Need to send a message to someone? Use the action message tool, and not only direct the message to a specific person, but also assign it to a contact or project/opportunity record.

Need a new report? Qasper's desktop-based Report Designer produces a template that can be used by everyone. You're not bound to a set of pre-designed reports; Qasper gives you the tools to not only modify them, but also to build any report you need.

And there's so much more. Look here at the modules and here for some of the features.

2. Where is my data stored and how secure is it?

A typical on-demand environment stores your confidential information on host servers at an unknown location, with your data typically commingled with the data from all the other users.

The larger on-demand companies have their own server farms; the smaller ones outsource the data handling. In either event, you have no options.

Because the on-demand company providing the software typically provides the hosting as well, you cannot move your data to a server of your choice and continue to run their software.

Qasper splits the software from the data source. The software is ours; we lease it to you annually. The data is yours, and the data location is your choice. You pay for storing the data source.

By doing it this way, you own and can easily access your data and your data is never mixed with other data.

Our software runs at most data locations, from your own in-house network server to any of several qualified Internet service providers (ISP). We work with you to find an ISP and, if you want, can do all the setup for you.

Qasper can easily be 1/10 the cost of competitive CRM applications. For a small additional cost, your current web host provider may have all you need to run Qasper.

3. Can I work offline?

With many on-demand providers the answer is often "no". Many on-demand CRM applications are not built to provide offline capabilities, so you always have to be connected in order to access your critical data. 

 With Qasper, the answer is "yes". Qasper was built from the ground up to be both online and offline. 

Our Personal and Online versions are modified versions of Qasper Offline.

4. What do I do when the data server goes down?

In most cases, you wait. 

Few of the on-demand hosts have facilities that can redirect users to redundancy servers should the main server computers go down or become unavailable. Fewer still have redundant servers that are continually updated in real time. 

Even with the best, their redundant data is often hours behind.

With Qasper, you have the option to use our exclusive client-side redundancy feature that keeps a 'mini' version of the server database on your own computer. 

It constantly synchronizes the mini database with the server database (at rates as frequent as every 15 seconds) so that if the server goes down, you just go offline and continue processing.

5. Can I avoid or reduce the high per-user licensing fees?

The high per-user licensing fees charged by many on-demand companies to use their software and hosting service is simply prohibitive for many smaller businesses.

Most companies providing on-demand software charge on a per-user basis, on the following basis:

• The more users, the more tech support is required.

• The more users, the more resources are consumed.

By the time you add up all the basic, add-on and support costs, it easily hits $35 to $50 per user, per month. 

For a small business with perhaps 15 employees that need the software, that's $6,300 per year.

It's hard to cost-justify that kind of expense. That's why most companies can only afford to equip a limited few employees.

The days of high per-user fees are gone. With Qasper, the same 15 employees (and dozens more) can run Qasper on a hosted server for a total of $600 to $800 per year. For that 15 user company, that's less than $55 per user, per year. A savings of $5,700 per year over the alternatives.

You pay one annual licensing fee for Qasper, regardless of the number of users. Then you pay your Internet service provider (ISP) for the hosted service. That service can typically handle dozens of users without increasing the monthly charge. That monthly charge is in the range of $10 to $25, to accommodate everyone, not per user. 

If you host Qasper on your own network server, there is likely no additional cost, so you just pay Qasper's annual licensing fee.

With Qasper's approach, the result is a cost that can be 10 times less expensive than competitors. 

What about service? Qasper provides extensive help, online presentations, FAQ lookup and user forums to guide you through any issues. And we encourage group dynamics to keep your costs down to a minimum.

6. Who owns my data and how do I get it back?

You need to read the agreement carefully. In some cases, the data is not your own and the provider might claim it has no obligation to return it to you.

Contemporary on-demand providers acknowledge that you own the data. However, how you retrieve it varies from provider to provider. In many cases, getting it back in useable form is a real challenge.

As the on-demand market matures, most providers will use our approach.

With Qasper you own the data and have direct access to it through the host provider. 

You can download it in its native form through any available means, like your desktop database administrator (SQL Server Enterprise Manager or MySQL Administrator, depending on the database type) or the export options provided by your host. 

Or just click Qasper's built-in database manager to back up your database to industry-standard XML format, then use the same database manager to import the XML file into the same or any other database.