Customer Service Crm Salesforce On Demand

Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) is one of the pioneers of the software as a service (SaaS) model of distributing business software, in which access to business software is purchased on a subscription basis and hosted offsite. They are best known for their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products, which it delivers to businesses over the internet using the SaaS model.

History

Origins

Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff as a company specializing in SaaS software. In June 2004, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM. Initial investors in salesforce.com were Marc Benioff, Mark Iscaro, Larry Ellison, Halsey Minor, Magdalena Yesil and Igor Sill, Geneva Venture Partners.

Current status

Salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with regional headquarters in Dublin (covering Europe, Middle East, and Africa), Singapore (covering Asia Pacific less Japan), and Tokyo (covering Japan). Other major offices are in Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, and San Mateo, California. Salesforce.com has its services translated into 16 different languages and currently has 55,400 customers and over 1,500,000 subscribers.

Following the Federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in September 2008, the S&P 500 removed the two mortgage giants after Wednesday, September 10, 2008, and added Fastenal and Salesforce.com to the index, effective after Friday, September 12, 2008.

Acquisitions

The following is a complete list of acquisitions by salesforce.com:

• Sendia (April 2006) for US$15 million in cash – now Force.com Mobile
• Kieden (August 2006) – now Salesforce for Google AdWords
• Kenlet (January 2007) – Original product CrispyNews used at Salesforce IdeaExchange and Dell IdeaStorm . Now relaunched as Salesforce Ideas.
• Koral (March 2007) – now Salesforce Content
• Instranet (August 2008) – now rebranded to Salesforce Knowledge

Security issues

In November 2007, a successful phishing attack compromised contact information on a number of salesforce.com customers, which was then used to send highly-targeted phishing emails to Salesforce users.

Products and services

Customer Relationship Management

Salesforce.com's CRM solution is broken down into several modules: Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas and Analytics.

Force.com Platform

Salesforce.com's Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com's infrastructure.

These applications are built using Apex (a proprietary Java-like programming language for the Force.com Platform) and Visualforce (an XML-like syntax for building user interfaces in HTML, AJAX or Flex).

AppExchange

Launched in 2005, AppExchange is a directory of applications built for Salesforce by third-party developers which users can purchase and add to their Salesforce environment. As of September 2008, there are over 800 applications available from over 450 ISVs. Applications include services from Google, ConstantContact, Vertical Response, Good Data, and Box.net.

Customization

Salesforce users can customize their CRM application. In the system, there are tabs such as "Contacts", "Reports", and "Accounts". Each tab contains associated information. For example, "Contacts" has standard fields like First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Customization can be done on each tab, by adding user-defined custom fields.

Customization can also be done at the "platform" level by adding customized applications to a Salesforce.com instance, that is adding sets of customized / novel tabs for specific vertical- or function-level (Finance, Human Resources, etc) features.

Web Services

In addition to the web interface, Salesforce offers a Web Services API that enables integration with other systems.

Mobile support

In April 2009, Salesforce released a slimmed down version of their application for subscribers with Blackberry, iPhone, and Windows mobile devices.

Languages

English, Dutch, Spanish, German, French, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Thai, Danish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Application and online help & training documentation are available in these languages.

Also, end user languages are available in Hungarian, Czech, Turkish, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian & Estonian.

Other

Other technologies in use at salesforce.com are Resin Application Server, and the in-house technologies Apex (a Java-like programming language and programming platform) and S-controls (Salesforce widgets - these are predominantly based on JavaScript).

See also

• Customer Relationship Management
• Software as a Service
• Web application

Notes

1. ^ Yahoo! Finance, 2009-02-25 .
2. ^ Yahoo Finance News-Business, 2008-05-08 .
3. ^ Corporate History and Milestones, “The End of Software” revolution begins, retrieved 2009-10-03 .
4. ^ Translations in different languages.
5. ^ Amount of customers.
6. ^ Dreamforce Europe 2008
7. ^ *
8. ^ http://www.sendia.com/
9. ^ Salesforce buy extends reach to mobile devices, 2006-04-11
10. ^ Salesforce for Google AdWords
11. ^ Popular Stories - www
12. ^ Popular Ideas - IdeaExchange
13. ^ Popular Ideas - Dell IdeaStorm
14. ^ Zdnet UK's report on the breach.
15. ^ Amount of Salesforce Applications, 2009-06-20
16. ^ O'Reilly Network - An Introduction to Salesforce.com's AppExchange
17. ^ Salesforce.com Introduces Mobile Lite for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile

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