Salesforce.com Targets Finance Industry
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Claiming Bloomberg and the Bloomberg Terminal lock customers in with a proprietary workstation and software accessed on an archaic keyboard, and that Bloomberg offers a deep but very narrow selection of financial feeds, Salesforce.com will announce on Tuesday a competitive Wealth Management Edition of its SaaS (Software as a Service) application for use by wealth management professionals.
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Salesforce.com's CEO is due to talk up the analytics customization capabilities of the next release of the vendor's hosted CRM software.
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Builds own sales army Marc Benioff delivered a spirited defense of Salesforce.com's growth and spending plans today, after announcing income plunged on surging sales.â¦
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Software maker Salesforce.com Inc. said it reached an agreement with Google to make Web-based software applications that help businesses improve sales and marketing.
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(InfoWorld) - Salesforce.com on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its hosted customer relationship management service, which it said will add a new portal and workflow management capabilities and ease the process of writing and testing new custom applications. The new version of the service comes just days after Microsoft introduced its much anticipatedÂ entryÂ into the hosted CRM business. The 23rd version of the Salesforce.com service lets users access the company's proprietary Apex Code programming language to customize their CRM applications or write new ones to run on Salesforce.com servers, the company said. "Customers can write code that runs on our servers -- it's programming without software," said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, in a statement. The company said that Apex Code is similar to the widely used Java language and that applications written using it can be accessed via Web standards such as XML or SOAP. The new version also adds what Salesforce.com calls Intelligent Workflow, which will allow users to add rules to business processes. A new on-demand Customer Portal can deliver Web 2.0 collaborative content to customers, the company said. The Intelligent Workflow capability will come in handy at Salesforce.com customerÂ Enviance, an on-demand environmental regulation compliance software provider based in Carlsbad, Calif., said Michele Hincks, vice president of marketing at the company. Enviance has been running Salesforce.com since 2004 for sales, marketing and customer service, but the workflow management capabilities have thus far been very rudimentary, she said. The workflow tool will allow the company to use custom fields help process new customers and perform other tasks, Hincks said. She also said she expects that marketing personnel at Enviance will be able to use Apex Code to custom-build applications, so they will no longer have to wait for IT programmers to get to such projects. "It seems it will be more usable," she said. "I can cut and paste code myself." Mike Epner, vice president of worldwide services and support at Borland Software, said that his firm will create several new applications to run on the Salesforce.com platform. In addition, Borland plans to use the new version's portal to deliver technical support content to Borland customers. "The new release continues the evolution from software as a service to platform as a service," said Denis Pombriant, analyst at Beagle Research Group LLC. "Platform as a service enables CIOs to concentrate less on keeping their infrastructures running while spending more time on deriving business benefits for their companies." The new version of Salesforce.com, called Summer '07, will be available in August.
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(InfoWorld) - Salesforce.comÂ is starting to provide some details about the next version of its hosted CRM (customer relationship management) software, including the product's primary focus, which will be customization. Known as Salesforce Winter '07, the upcoming release will become generally available in the fourth quarter of this year, Salesforce.com said Wednesday. The vendor plans to launch aÂ Web siteÂ on Thursday to invite user feedback on the Winter '07 version. The idea is to foster a closer working relationship between Salesforce users and the vendor's developers, Marc Benioff, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, wrote in an e-mail. Winter '07 will feature a new user interface based on Ajax or asynchronous JavaScript and extensible markup language, a group of software development tools and standards that help create interactive Web applications. Users will be have the ability to customize the CRM application's desktop console and components. Other new features include a hook-in to Cisco Systems' computer telephony integration option and full support for IBM's Lotus Notes collaboration software. Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM is available in different versions targeting a variety of users including its Personal, Team, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Editions. The vendor's last major CRM version, Summer '06,Â debuted in JulyÂ along with a connector for its Enterprise and Unlimited Editions integrating its software with SAP's R/3 ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications. Salesforce.com competes with a variety of players in the hosted midmarket applications arena including SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite.
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Business software maker Salesforce.com Inc.  said on Tuesday it would help other companies market their software products on its Web site and charge commissions on sales generated by the new service.
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The success of Facebook's Web-app building tools hasn't gone unnoticed by Salesforce.com, which on Friday announced a new platform for building on-demand business software that it hopes will lead to an "explosion" of applications.
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A customer can connect to Google's AdWords and create an ad linked to particular search results. Anyone clicking on that ad is then encouraged to complete a form with their contact details, which then automatically becomes a new lead in Salesforce.com's CRM package.
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InfoWorld - In a deal that makes both companies look good, Salesforce.com announced that Omniture, one of the leaders in online Web marketing analytics, will be the newest service to join AppExchange.
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Stealing a page from the Apple iTunes playbook, Salesforce.com announced on Thursday a $0.99 pricing model.The introductory subscription pricing is on a per-log-in basis and is meant to accelerate the adoption of the SaaS (software as a service) ?model into such areas as human resources, employee expense and vacation requests, and job recruiting, where an infrequent usage model would not justify a monthly subscription fee.?In a category like vacation requests, HR may live in that but every employee is not accessing it every day. This is for a new community,? said Ariel Kelman, senior director for platform product marketing.The $0.99 pricing will be good for one year and will rise to $5 per log-in with a maximum five log-ins per user per month starting in 2009.?Salesforce also announced a new Cloud Computing Architecture which Kelman characterized as ?development as a service.?Dubbed the Force.com Development-as-a Service, the technology also includes the year-long .99 cent pricing model and uses the Force.com development platform which will also offer a .99 cent per log in service for developers.Development-as-a-Service will give users a set of development tools in the cloud and a metadata API which so that developers can access code and the database schema.?This is about accessing your definitions of your custom application,? said Kelman.As Kelman describes it, the new service also enables developers to use the Force.com IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which sits in a hosted environment.What Salesforce is doing is adding the other pieces to their Force.com development environment that it needs to appeal to an enterprise audience, said Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of research at Nucleus Research.?The goal with Platform-as-a-Service was to be an on-demand platform developer. Having an API to develop code and having an environment where developers can share, manage, and track code in a collaborative way goes a long way toward attracting those enterprise users,? said Wetteman.Because it is a Web application it also will make collaboration between developers easier. To that end, Salesforce is introducing Force.com Code Share.According to Kelman, when development takes place in the cloud, developers can connect to open source communities. For example, developers can log onto Project Hosting on Google Code and use Code Share to collaborate on building Force.com applications, Kelman said.The Force.com Development-as-a-Service tools are available in developer preview. No date was given for a final version.
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StrikeForce Technologies (OTCBB: SKFT), a company that specializes in the prevention of identity theft, today announced that ten customers have recently signed up to use its Anti-Fraud Prevention Monthly Service to help control their upsurge in Internet-based credit card fraud.
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(InfoWorld) - The North American sales arm of Singapore Airlines Ltd. is halfway through a project to use on-demand software from Salesforce.com Inc. to improve collaboration between its home-based corporate travel staff. Following the lead of some of its peers in the industry, Singapore Airlines is requiring corporate business travel sales staff to work out of their homes to pare down infrastructure costs. The sales staff is spread out in cities including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and San Diego. The issue the airline and other companies are grappling with is how best to foster collaboration between such geographically scattered staff while also increasing efficiency and driving more sales. Prior to initial deployment of Salesforce.com's hosted sales automation and marketing software in April, the sales staff relied on e-mail and offline meetings as its main method for communication and collaboration, according to Michael Stellwag, manager of direct sales and marketing for the Americas at Singapore Airlines. About 18 months ago, the airline decided a sales force automation tool could help bring its home-based sales staff into closer collaboration with each other. Singapore Airlines took an in-depth look at products from three vendors over the course of six months -- Sage Software Inc.'s Act contact management software, enterprise applications vendor Saratoga Systems' CRM (customer relationship management) product, and Salesforce.com's hosted sales force automation and marketing offerings. The airline particularly liked Salesforce.com's on-demand approach since the application could run without support from Singapore Airlines' IT staff. The airline closed a deal to use Salesforce software as the software vendor's fiscal year ended on Jan. 31, 2006. From late 2005 through early 2006, Salesforce.com experienced a series of much publicized service outages. "We didn't place too much emphasis [on the failures]," Stellwag said. "Companies like Salesforce.com live and die by availability and we were confident the problem would be fixed. It didn't seem like anything more than a blip on the radar screen." Once the application was up and running, Stellwag began to check out Salesforce.com's AppExchange Web site where the vendor showcases both its own on-demand add-ons and applications developed by third parties to be used with the Salesforce software. "I looked at the broad array of applications and got hooked," he said. Of particular interest have been applications that address the specific needs of the airline industry, according to Stellwag. So far, Singapore Airlines is using 14 AppExchange applications including user adoption dashboards that measure how frequently the sales staff use the software. He also highlighted an application that integrates the Hoover's company database, an important source of sales leads for the airline's staff, with the Salesforce software. Looking ahead, Singapore Airlines wants to find ways to help sales team members be more efficient in how they set up trips to meet customers by doing mash-ups between Salesforce and mapping software from Mapquest Inc. and Google Inc. So far, about a dozen home-based salespeople are using the Salesforce software, with several more individuals to go live shortly. "Longer term, the number of home-based sales team members could jump considerably," Stellwag said. The sales staff particularly like the hosted software's offline module which enables them to access the basic functionality of Salesforce without needing an Internet connection. "People are communicating more than ever before," Stellwag said. "Everyone can see everyone else's details to facilitate greater cooperation and communication and for everyone to see how everyone else is doing." That ability to view colleague's sales progress acts as a self motivator for staff to ensure their efforts are at the level they should be, he added. Sharing calendars and task lists is proving extremely helpful in enabling the airline to put together an account team focused on a particular company, despite the sales team being based in different locations. Soon, the airline will roll out IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes groupware to its sales operation in the U.S. and Canada, which had previously been using Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook Express. Stellwag is looking forward to the integration of Notes with Salesforce to enable further collaboration. "Salesforce has been successful at increasing productivity and has had a significant impact on our sales success," Stellwag said. "This is an experiment being watched very closely by executives in our worldwide headquarters in Singapore." When the project ends in about a year's time, if it has continued to meet a number of preset key performance indicators, the door could be open for a wider deployment of the hosted software. Â
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BusinessWeek Online - Salesforce.com  has the growth story down pat, but keeping up the pace can get tricky as competitors toughen your game. Investors sold Salesforce stock on Feb. 22 - even after news that the on-demand software services company won a whopping 90,000 net new subscribers during the three months ended Jan. 31.
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NEW YORK - Hosted CRM (customer relationship management) evangelist Salesforce.com Inc. began a new branding campaign this week to draw attention to its customer-service support functionality, launching a new Web site at Supportforce.com and announcing a batch of partnerships with top call center infrastructure vendors.
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Salesforce.com Inc. ,  which has been working with Google Inc.  to make its  Web-based software applications meld with Google's own software  push, said on Tuesday it is enabling its customers to sell  Google advertising through Salesforce business software.
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TechWeb - In an effort to spur sales of its products, Salesforce is launching a program to give third-party software vendors marketing help in exchange for a cut of sales.