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In-Depth Review
Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com
The Landmark @ One Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Telephone: 415-901-7000
Fax: 415-901-7040
Toll Free: 800-667-6389
Email: info@salesforce.com
Web:
www.salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship
management (CRM) services. More companies trust their vital customer and
sales data to salesforce.com than any other on-demand CRM company in the
world.
Why? Perhaps it's because we deliver integrated, completely customizable
enterprise applications for companies of all sizes. Or maybe it's because
Salesforce is so easy to learn and use, and thanks to the power of the
on-demand Apex platform, it can be up and running in weeks or days—not the
months or years required by traditional client/server CRM software. Or it
could be the unprecedented speed with which our customers see real, tangible
ROI. Or maybe it's because of our 100-percent dedication to the success of
our customers.
In fact, more than 32,300 companies worldwide depend on Salesforce to manage
their sales, marketing, customer service, and other critical business
functions. We are proud to be contributing to the success of companies of
all sizes, in all industries, around the globe including:
- ADP
- Corporate Express
- Daiwa Securities
- Expedia Corporate Travel
- Dow Jones Newswires
- SunTrust Banks
- Kaiser Permanente
Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc
Benioff, who pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications via
a simple Web site. Salesforce.com is constantly building on that legacy by
improving and expanding our award-winning suite of on-demand applications,
our Apex platform for extending Salesforce, and our one-of-a-kind
AppExchange directory of on-demand applications.
Salesforce.com has received considerable recognition in the industry,
including:
- Technology of the Year (InfoWorld, 2004, 2005, 2006)
- Editors' Choice Award (PC Magazine, 2002, 2003, 2004)
- Visionary Award (SDForum, 2004)
- Best of the Web (Forbes, 2003)
- CRM Excellence Award (Customer Inter@ction Solutions, 2003, 2004,
2005, 2006)
- Top 100 Innovators Award (BusinessWeek, 2006)
- Innovation Award (AMR Research, 2005)
- CODIE Award for Best CRM (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)
The growing list of global business partners dedicated to providing
complementary products and services to salesforce.com customers includes
IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems, Sun, TIBCO, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Miller
Heiman, and dozens more.
Product: Salesforce.com
Current Version: Summer -
2007
Category: SaaS Medium Enterprise CRM Solution
Sub-Category:
Client Platform: Web Browser
Server Platform:
Database Platform: Oracle
From inception, the Salesforce.com service has been specifically designed
to provide customers with robust CRM solutions on an outsourced basis
through our proprietary, scalable and secure multi-tenant application
architecture. Key benefits of our solution include:
- Rapid deployment. Salesforce.com can be deployed
rapidly and provisioned easily, since customers do not have to spend
time installing or maintaining the servers, networking equipment,
security products or other infrastructure hardware and software
necessary to ensure a scalable and reliable service.
- Enable high levels of user adoption. The company
has designed their service to be easy-to-use and intuitive. Since the
service contains many tools and features recognizable to users of
popular websites such as those of Amazon.com, eBay and Yahoo!, it has a
more familiar interface than typical CRM applications. As a result,
Salesforce.com users do not require substantial training on how to use
and benefit from the service.
- Lower total cost of ownership. Salesforce.com
enables customers to achieve significant savings relative to the
traditional enterprise software model. The service enables customers to
automate sales, customer service and support and marketing processes
without having to make large and risky upfront investments in software,
hardware and implementation services and additional IT staff.
- Extensive features, functionality and configurability.
Salesforce.com offers a comprehensive array of CRM capabilities across
sales, customer service and support and marketing that meet the needs of
businesses of any size. The company also enables customers to tailor
important characteristics of our service to meet their unique
requirements without the use of significant IT resources.
- Secure, scalable and reliable delivery platform.
The company built and maintains a multi-tenant application architecture
that has been designed to enable their service to scale securely,
reliably and cost-effectively to tens of thousands of customers and
millions of users.
- Ease of integration. Salesforce.com has developed a
set of application programming interfaces, or APIs, which they provide
on a platform called sforce, that enables customers and independent
developers to integrate their service with existing third-party, custom
and legacy applications and write their own application services that
integrate with the service.
Salesforce.com’s objective is to be the leading provider of on-demand
application services for businesses worldwide. To achieve this objective
they intend to:
- continue to lead the industry transformation to on-demand
application services
- strengthen and extend the service offering
- pursue new customers and new territories aggressively
- deepen relationships with the existing customer base; and encourage
the development of third-party applications on the sforce platform
Comprehensive On-Demand Business Services
Sales
Salesforce SFA enables companies to drive sales productivity, increase
visibility, and expand revenues with an affordable, easy-to-deploy service
that delivers success to companies of all sizes.
Details
Service & Support
The Salesforce solution for customer service gets companies up and
running in a matter of weeks with a call center application that is loved by
agents and a customer self-service application— powered by Web 2.0—that
generates new levels of customer loyalty.
Details
Partner Relationship Management
Salesforce PRM makes it easy for partners to access leads, collaborate on
deals, and locate all the information they need in order to be successful.
PRM is seamlessly integrated with Salesforce SFA to deliver unparalleled
visibility to your company's entire sales pipeline for direct and indirect
channels.
Details
Marketing
Salesforce Marketing enables closed-loop marketing to execute, manage,
and analyze the results of multichannel campaigns. Marketing executives can
measure the ROI of their budgets, tie revenue back to specific marketing
programs, and make adjustments in real time.
Details
Analytics
Salesforce Analytics empowers business users at every level to gain
relevant insight and analysis. With real-time reporting, calculations, and
dashboards, businesses can optimize performance, decision making, and
resource allocation.
Details
Custom Applications
Build enterprise-class applications on salesforce.com's powerful
on-demand platform. Deliver all your company's business applications in a
single environment with one data model, one sharing model, and one user
interface.
Details
Industry Applications
Meet all of your industry-specific needs with salesforce.com's
award-winning CRM, a broad variety of on-demand apps from the AppExchange,
and the Apex platform. Our industry applications are built on the successes
of hundreds of companies in your industry. And because no two companies are
exactly alike, all industry apps are fully and easily customizable.
Financial Services |
Government
| Nonprofits
AppExchange Applications
The AppExchange is your one-stop marketplace for on-demand business
applications. The AppExchange makes it easy to find, sample, and select from
hundreds of apps for your business, all preintegrated with Salesforce.
Details
Team Edition
The price for Salesforce.com Team Edition is $995 per year
for five users.
Professional Edition
The price for Salesforce.com Professional Edition is $65
per user per month.
Enterprise Edition
The price for Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition is $125
per user per month.
Unlimited Edition
The price for Salesforce.com Unlimited Edition is $195 per
user per month.
These prices include free online training and standard customer support.
Strategic Vision
At a very high level, I think the company has a sound strategic vision.
However, they have focused the majority of their effort on “under the hood”
technical issues and still fail to deliver many of the capabilities sales
people actually need to take better care of their customers.
Tactical Execution
I do think the company has been very visionary in establishing their
technical foundation. They have done a good job of embracing still evolving
web standards.
Core Capabilities
Salesforce.com does a pretty good job with the core capabilities. If your
sales challenges call for a fixated attention to detail, the account and
contact management capabilities of Salesforce.com could be a good choice for
you.
Total Relationship Management
Salesforce.com was most disappointing addressing the total customer
life-cycle management capabilities. At this point, I consider Salesforce.com
to be merely a glorified contact manager. The program does not go far enough
in crucial areas such as actually helping sales people take better care of
their customers or helping managers more effectively manage their sales
teams.
Looking Forward
Have a question about this program?
Then please just email me your question! If the answer is short
& sweet, I will pop you back an answer. If the question requires further
research, I will look into it and post the reply on my blog,
AskRichBohn.com, to share with
others. As always, you can email me at
rich@sellmorenow.com !
We recently honored this program with our Willy award for:
- Best SaaS CRM Solution for Medium Enterprise
A fully updated review of this product will be available in January -
2008!
The program does a great job with the following:
The program does an acceptable job with the following:
The program needs improvement with the following:
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Company – Financial Condition
-
Company – Management Team
-
Sales & Marketing Strategy
-
Pricing
-
Credibility
-
Research & Development Strategy
-
Software Quality
-
System Architecture
-
Customization & Adaptability
-
Application Integration Capabilities
-
Business Process Management
Capabilities
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International Support
-
Ease of Use
-
Documentation
-
Training Support
-
Technical Support
-
Interaction Capabilities
-
Database Synchronization Capabilities
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Implementation Issues
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Account Management
-
Contact Management
-
Activity Management
-
Time Management
-
Outlook Integration
-
Knowledge Management Capabilities
-
Reporting Capabilities
-
CRM Analytics
-
Word Processing & Office Support
-
Marketing Support Capabilities
-
Field Sales Support Capabilities
-
Call Center Support Capabilities
-
Sales Impact
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Sales Management Capabilities
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Partner Management Capabilities
-
Customer Support Capabilities
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eBusiness Support Capabilities
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Back Office Integration
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Executive (C-Level) Decision Support
-
ASP Support
-
Industry Specific Solutions
-
Third-Party Product Support
Order In-Depth Review R1278 Price: $97.00
This review covers the Winter-2008 release and is 1xx pages long. This
review was last updated in January 2008. Please note: If this link is inactive it means
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Short List:
If you are considering this program, you should also look at these other
CRM solutions:
Rich's Recommended Web Sites
CRM Success
Salesforce.com's own site discussing best practices
http://crmsuccess.blogs.com/
Trust.Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com's own site devoted to system performance, discussing
real-time access to critical service performance characteristics and
historical information.
http://trust.salesforce.com/
AppExchange Developer Network
Salesforce.com's own site devoted to SForce
http://blog.sforce.com/
AppExchange Open Source Projects
Salesforce.com's own site devoted to related Open Source Projects
http://sforce.sourceforge.net/
SalesForceWatch.com
Salesforcewatch.com is written by Mark Mangano, Director of Application
Development for a financial services firm outside of Philadelphia, PA. It is
a great site!
http://www.salesforcewatch.com/
Perspectives on Salesforce.com
This blog is written from the perspective of a Salesforce.com solution
provider and contains tips, findings, sample code, functionality wishes,
etc.
http://sfdc.arrowpointe.com/
Bill Emerson's Weblog
A Developer's Look at the sforce api.
http://spaces.msn.com/billemerson/
Outreach Salesforce
More useful Salesforce tips
http://jsalesforce.blogspot.com/
Rich's Recommended Reads
This next book is not about CRM, but it might give you some insight into
the mind of Salesforce.com founder, Marc Benioff. I think Benioff is an
interesting fellow and I will give them credit, the company does "walk the
talk" with their charitable efforts.
Buy
these books from Amazon.com
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