The company’s applications in the CRM arena consist of two main products – Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2. It has gained some 72500 customers globally since Salesforce was set up in 1999. Sales Cloud 2 enable sales departments to take initiatives like building rich customer databases, managing and analysing outcomes of marketing campaigns, updating contact information and bringing attention to poor quality records, dashboards that keep a tab on performance indicators and provide actionable intelligence, access to all presentations and data sheets and automating sales processes. Service Cloud offers utilities like having all possible customer information and past records at the agent’s disposal, enabling self service, faster & customizable searches for the right solution, dashboards on customer performance, et al. Another very exciting application (in the beta stage) is the Salesforce Chatter, akin to being a company’s private Facebook, through which salespeople can stay in constant touch and exchange information in real time.
Salesforce.com has been seeing impressive growth globally, and was made a part of S&P 500 in 2008 when Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae dropped out. It posted revenues of $1.3 billion for FY 2009-10 (growth of 21% yoy). Revenues from Asia Pacific grew the fastest by 36.32% yoy to reach $149.39 million. The response has been phenomenal in India, where the company grew its customer base by 42% in FY 2010. They have targeted a lot of small small businesses looking for low cost and easily deployable CRM systems. The expected boom in 3G and broadband makes India even more potentially lucrative.
Then again, there is that adage of having too much of a good thing. Salesforce could face what could be a protracted litigation against software giant Microsoft, which has also launched its own Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online software. The latter complains that Salesforce.com infringes 9 of Microsoft’s patents in software menus, GUIs, toolbars and also how the company takes data from remote computers. Actually, competition between the two has been intensifying. The not-so-politically-correct Steve Ballmer even promised to give Salesforce.com “a very effective run for is money”. Having a competitor like Microsoft means you are in the big league. But Microsoft’s past record on how it treats competitors is legendary; something that Salesforce.com would do well to stay warned about!
Salesforce.com has been seeing impressive growth globally, and was made a part of S&P 500 in 2008 when Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae dropped out. It posted revenues of $1.3 billion for FY 2009-10 (growth of 21% yoy). Revenues from Asia Pacific grew the fastest by 36.32% yoy to reach $149.39 million. The response has been phenomenal in India, where the company grew its customer base by 42% in FY 2010. They have targeted a lot of small small businesses looking for low cost and easily deployable CRM systems. The expected boom in 3G and broadband makes India even more potentially lucrative.
Then again, there is that adage of having too much of a good thing. Salesforce could face what could be a protracted litigation against software giant Microsoft, which has also launched its own Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online software. The latter complains that Salesforce.com infringes 9 of Microsoft’s patents in software menus, GUIs, toolbars and also how the company takes data from remote computers. Actually, competition between the two has been intensifying. The not-so-politically-correct Steve Ballmer even promised to give Salesforce.com “a very effective run for is money”. Having a competitor like Microsoft means you are in the big league. But Microsoft’s past record on how it treats competitors is legendary; something that Salesforce.com would do well to stay warned about!
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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