dolution

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is a $3-billion company providing state-of-the-art cloud computing and solutions for the sales industry. It offers one-stop shopping for numerous sales software and application tools using cloud computing, storage, and connectivity tools online. Through the recent acquisition of many online business partners (e.g., Heroku, Dimdim, Radian6, Assistly), Salesforce.com has become a direct competitor with major software firms SAP and Oracle. Each of these acquisitions has resulted in much needed specialties in serving the sales industry. For example, Heroku provides application platforms supporting a multitude of programming languages. Dimdim offers salespeople online meeting collaboration, whereas Radian6’s specialty is social media monitoring, metrics, sentiment analysis, and analytic dashboards (all discussed in Chapter 14). Assistly, now renamed as Desk.com, collects and organizes customer social media conversations.
Salesforce.com charges between $5 to $250 per month for a wide range of services to those working in sales, including tracking sales opportunities and e-mail, lead scoring and ranking, sales campaigns, mass e-mailing, dashboard analytics, sales forecasts, sales-to-sales collaboration, sales trends, territory management, mobile customization, 24/7 support, etc. In staying ahead of competitors, Salesforce.com is building added software (“Chatter”) that works like Facebook and is intended for those in sales to share and collaborate more openly with customers, others in their firm and supply chain, and the industry as a whole. Needless to say, such information management advances have come a long way from the “old school” selling approaches of the past.