Salesforce Case
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Salesforce
Salesforce was founded in 1999 and is today a leading company in the CRM software field, with over 9,500 customers. Salesforce is an innovator in the field of providing software as a service over a cloud computing network. What this means is, rather than install a large software package with high up-front costs, Salesforce allows a company to subscribe to only those software solutions they need for their enterprise.
Users log into the Salesforce website to use the software features their company has subscribed too. Once they have done so, they are greeted with a dashboard page featuring a variety of tables and graphs relevant to their position and the tasks they have for the day. Most of these graphs are compiled from existing CRM data and are updated instantly, making the dashboard both extremely relevant and continually up to date.
Navigation is conducted with tabbed accounts located at the top of the page, as is usual for most business software already in use. This gives Salesforce a sense of familiarity for new users, and the tabs include common tasks and features such as Contacts, Accounts, and leads, in addition to calendar features and integration with Outlook and Google Docs.
In addition to the normal contact and opportunities information used by CRM programs, Salesforce also integrates social media information into contact profiles. This allows users to keep up with information vendors and customers post to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as the social media profiles of individuals. This information could be useful when setting up meetings with new customers and vendors.
Salesforce also provides a feature called Chatter. Chatter is in many ways an “in house” social networking program. It allows employees of the company to communicate quickly and update project status information instantly from within the Salesforce client. This would greatly speed up and simplify intracompany communications.
A major benefit of using Salesforce is that it can be configured by the users and managers based on their own needs, and therefore does not require a significant amount of time from the IT department. In order to make maximum use of this benefit, however, a significant amount of time must be spent in setting up and planning for the integration of Salesforce into existing business practice.
Salesforce is also taking steps to maintain relationships with stakeholders through engaging in some socially conscious business practices. Specifically, Salesforce makes their services available either for free or at greatly reduced cost to non-profit enterprises. As ethical business practices are increasingly important to customers, Salesforce makes for an attractive partner on this issue.
Issues to bear in mind if Salesforce is selected include the preparation time that must be devoted