By Allan Maurer
SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Salesforce.com has proven that the cloud computing model is the best opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to build the next killer enterprise application, says Polly Sumner, president, Global Services, and chief adoption officer of the company. “Start-ups and independent software vendors are now able to create and run new applications entirely over the Internet, without software,” she says.
Sumner, one of 75 top Internet gurus participating in TechJournal South’s Internet Summit Nov. 4-5 at the Raleigh, NC Convention Center (see: www.Internetsummit.com for more information or to register), is responsible for Salesforce.com customer success and ensuring that each and every customer gets maximum value from its products and services.
She discussed the success of the company and its customers in an email interview with TechJournal South.
What has Salesforce.com learned about doing business online that would benefit entrepreneurs:
“Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform provides the most efficient and cost-effective infrastructure to develop enterprise apps in the cloud. Force.com provides the necessary building blocks for entrepreneurs to quickly build and run business applications and also enables data and applications to be easily extended to mobile devices.
“Force.com does this without requiring customers to manage and maintain additional client/server infrastructure.
“Entrepreneurs can build any kind of business app and realize all the benefits of multitenancy — their solution runs on the same code-base and underlying technology that powers Salesforce CRM and are able to leverage its proven reliability, scalability and security. For an entrepreneur, getting their app built and running quickly is paramount to their success.
Great example of delivering cloud apps
“A leading research firm recently found that the Force.com platform enabled developers to build applications five times faster and at half the cost as opposed to using traditional development software. A great example of how companies can deliver cloud apps is CODA, an established accounting software vendor based in the UK.
“Over three decades CODA built an impressive accounting suite, but realized they needed to have a cloud-based offering to compete in the future. Rather than building their own data centers CODA built their cloud-based accounting suite on Force.com – a move which saved them two years of development work!”
How can companies use the Internet to enhance their sales?
“In times like these, it is imperative for companies to quickly act on every sales lead. In addition, sales teams are seeing more educated and savvy customers thanks to all the information available online.
“Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud allows sales teams to utilize the cloud computing model to manage all their prospective customer information, activities, and conversations to deliver a 360 degree view of each customer.
“By analyzing this customer information using the Sales Cloud’s real-time dashboards, companies can make better sales decisions—from forecasting to closing more business. This allows them to be more targeted in their sales interactions, saving time and getting their customers and prospects the information they need to make a sale.
“One example of how Salesforce CRM benefits sales teams in customer acquisition is through the integration with Google AdWords.
“The powerful combination of Salesforce CRM and Google AdWords enables companies of all sizes to take an opportunity from the keyword all the way through to deal close – all within the convenience of their Salesforce CRM application. Salesforce CRM in combination with Google AdWords allows companies to develop an online marketing presence which is essential in today’s global marketplace to acquire customers and grow their business.”
Can startups and entrepreneurs benefit from a relationship with salesforce.com? If so, how? Can they afford it?
Salesforce.com offers an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs as I mentioned previously. Venture capitalists are investing in Web-based companies both for consumers and enterprises. For example Force.com AppExchange partners have received $600 million in funding from venture capital firms.
With our Force.com platform, start-ups don’t have to invest millions into building their own infrastructure and data centers; rather they can leverage salesforce.com’s service and the same reliable, scalable and secure infrastructure that has delivered Salesforce CRM for the past decade.
Additionally once the company is ready to deliver their new app, they can market it to salesforce.com’s nearly 60,000 customers on the Force.com AppExchange, a directory of applications that can be seamlessly integrated with a company’s Salesforce CRM instance. The best part of it – both building an app on Force.com and posting it to the Force.com AppExchange is that it’s free!
Tomorrow: Part Two. The economy; social networking; keys to successful Internet marketing.
Online: www.salesforce.com; www.internetsummit.com
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