Salesforce.com ramps up
Not content with just Web-based CRM and SFA (sales-force automation) applications, Salesforce.com within five years hopes to offer the full gamut of office applications via a hosted paradigm, including ERP systems.
The company this month is detailing the availability of Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition, which links its current online applications to a user’s in-house back-office platforms. The San Francisco-based company also is unveiling E-Business Suite and Offline Edition.
Salesforce.com President and CEO Marc Benioff is not shy about boasting of what he terms the company’s industry-leading position in CRM, with 3,600 customers. His crystal ball calls for Salesforce.com to become a full-service provider of Web-based, back-office software applications.
“Today, Salesforce.com provides more companies in the world with CRM than any other vendor. That’s why we consider ourselves to be the No. 1 vendor,” Benioff said.
“Our corporate goal is in five years, we want to offer all the components of SAP as well as PeopleSoft and Oracle and deliver them online,” Benioff said. This includes ERP applications in addition to current offerings for CRM, he added.
In February the company will release its Enterprise Edition, priced at $125 per month and featuring SFA, customer service and support, marketing automation, and integration with back-end office applications.
Early users of the product have been pleased thus far.
“I can’t imagine anybody using anything else. The implementation was incredible,” said Eddie Myers, group manager for retail relationships and customer care at Dallas-based Paymentech, which provides credit card processing services.
Deployment of the Enterprise Edition took 60 days whereas an internally housed CRM application would have taken six months to a year, Myers said.
Salesforce.com Professional Edition user Dennis Hanna, director of new business development at Textron Fastening Systems, in Troy, Mich., said the back-office integration with internal ERP applications featured in Enterprise Edition fills a gap in the Salesforce.com product line.
Available in the second quarter will be the Salesforce.com E-Business Suite, which features all the functions of the Enterprise Edition plus back-office applications such as e-billing, and management of invoices, contracts, and orders. It costs $195 per user per month.
Also available this spring is the Offline Edition, which allows salespeople to update sales data while disconnected from the Internet, and then synchronize afterward. Included with the Enterprise Edition and E-Business Suite, the Offline Edition costs an extra $25 per month per user for users of the Salesforce.com Professional Edition.
— Paul Krill
