Salesforce.com online CRM: Review

After my stint with the Sugar CRM from the Top 10 Customer Relationship Management Software , I decided to come up with one its rivals the Salesforce.com. The Salesforce CRM is one of most hosted web based CRM packages. The software streamlines the sales process of a company to save time and money. The Salesforce CRM assists sales, marketing, managing partner relationship, force automation, as well as customers care for businesses. This online CRM application allows strong support for tracking contacts, leads, and customer inquiries. It scores high on the reliability quotient and offers a full-time, in-house support for businesses. The system is designed to serve a variety of small-business users.

The key modules of the system include campaigns, leads, accounts, and opportunities, supporting majority of CRM functions. Since the Salesforce.com data centers host the web servers, the small businesses can escape the cost of investment in software license or new machines. The Professional edition is also available at a reasonable price. Salesforce.com allows full customization. Even a non-IT professional can configure and manage the customization. This CRM software keeps the pipeline organized and full of qualified leads.

Let’s look into the features of this web based CRM solution.

Automation of Marketing

This module helps in managing the marketing campaign. It also provides the reports the success of the campaigns.

Customer Service and Support:

This component helps in ameliorating the agent productivity. It manages initiation to resolution in customer contact.

Sales force automation

It allows extensive control over sales data and defines the processes that is adopted by the entire organization.

Document Management

It provides online access to complete account and contact repository.  It assists in tracking and managing relationships with individual clients who may not be a part of the corporate entity.

Content Management

It empowers the employees by providing them with direct access to the presentations and documents. It provides the every employee with the needed CRM content in a snap.

Contract management

This is a central repository for the customer contacts. It also helps create and track contracts until they are signed.

Product catalog management

This updates and manages the product portfolios.

Analytics

It provides a detailed analysis of the sales data that clarifies the success or failure.

Competitors

The main competitors of salesforce.com are Sage Software, Oracle, Frontrange Solutions.

Pros

There are several positives attached with salesforce.com

What makes Salesforce.com ace is the delivery. Since this is a online CRM the workforce can access the system even if they are in a remote location. This is a rear advantage with this CRM tool that leads to productivity gains.

Salesforce.com should provide excellent uptime

It’s offers an intuitive web based service that is user-friendly

The online documentation is a advantageous feature to avail for the workforce

Cons

Clearly salesforce.com is not perfect. There are downsides to this online application. Most importantly, the package cannot run without Internet connection. The business may have to reworking sales processes.

The outsourcing businesses use ASPs (application service providers) for effective mitigation of the TCO (total cost of ownership). When there are more customers to handle, the ASP has to be used for longer time and this increases the expenditure.