Salesforce.comCloud service go mainstream

COMPILED BY; HIMANI SHUKLA

BRIEF INRTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY

•NAME- SALESFORCE.COM

•INDUSTRY - SOFTWARE

•SERVICE(S)- CLOUD COMPUTING & SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

•FUNCTIONING SINCE- 1999

•FOUNDER- MARC BENIOFF

Company Overview•Salesforce provides customer

relationship management and other application software solutions in the form of software as a service leased over the internet.

•It earned $1.3 billion in revenue in 2009, making it one of the top 50 software companies in the world.

•It attributes its success to the multiple benefits of it’s on-demand model of software distribution.

•The subscription costs are assigned according to the diversity & needs of the organisation.

•Let us consider an example of Minnepolis-based Haagen-Dazs Shoppe owned by Nestle USA

How Does SALESFORCE functions?•Implementing Salesforce into an

organisation takes 3 months to the maximum and less than a month, in minimum.

•No major requirements such as hardware to purchase, implement or maintain

•No operating systems required as such, no consultants and staff to maintain and no expensive licensing fee.

•The system is easily and efficiently accessible via a generic web-browser itself

Continued...•The software is manually updatable

behind the scene•Subscribers are free to leave whenever

they wish to. There is no hard and fast rule as such.

Challenges Faced• Increased competitions both from

traditional companies and newly established start ups. Microsoft, SAP, oracle have launched there personalised versions in competition to it.

• Therefore, company has yet to expand its market since all the big companies are gradually coming into limelight.

• It has to continually prove to its customers that it is reliable, as once or twice it’s security has been breached.

Scope in the Company•Salesforce can think of expanding it’s

business model to other areas as well.•Till date, it is said to be trying to provide

additional functionality through partnerships from big players like Google, by combining its services with google’s counterparts such as g-mail, google docs, google talk etc.

•Salesforce is also said to shake hands with Apple

Continued...

•wall street experts expect salesforce to expand its area by switching its focus from selling of a suite of software apps to providing a broader cloud computing platform on which various software firms can deliver their applications.

Latest improvements made by SALESFORCE on its operation processes

Brief version of FORCE.COM•Salesforce opened up Force.com to other

independent software developers and listed their applications on its app exchange

•App exchange helps businesses to go online and download (utilise) over 950 software applications.

•Simply put, Force.com development environment enables users to develop web pages and register domain names.

Continued...•Salesforce has partnered with Amazon to

enable Force.com customer to tap into Amazon’s cloud computing services

•An international data centre (IDC) report estimates that Force.com platform enables users to build and run business apps and websites five times faster and at half the price than other non cloud standard alternatives.

Some examples•Let us look at an example of RehabCare.

A provider of Rehab medications, as to how efficient it service became just by the implementation of Force.com’s customised application

•Let us take another example of Author Solutions, a self publishing company, as to how it got benefited and managed saving up to 75% efforts.

Problems in the case study1-COST- the services are cheaper initially, but

later as there arises the need to upgrade the software, the expenses began to increase, due to which many companies are still reluctant to adopt Salesforce.com’s services

SOLUTION The company might try to lessen the expenses,

if not completely remove them. So that even smaller companies may not hesitate in adopting salesforce’s services, and also so that it gains more popularity than it’s rivals in the same stream

•2- SECURITY- there have been security breaches once or twice which shook the entire trust of its clients

SOLUTION Although the company was successful in

retaining the trust of its present clients, yet the potential clients got somehow doubtful regarding their confidentiality, the company must also put special efforts in maintaining the security

•3-MARKET- the company seems to pay less importance to marketing and It still has plenty of catching up to do in order to reach the size & market share of its larger rivals.

SOLUTION Some famous and well known companies

such as Microsoft might not have much better system than salesforce, yet potential customers are much inclined towards microsoft which again hinders the salesforce’s possibility of grabbing more clients. Salesforce must plan some strategies to overcome this problem

Queries raised in this case studyHow does Salesforce.com use cloud computing?What are some of the challenges facing

Salesforce as it continues its growth? How well will it be able to meet those challenges?

What kinds of businesses could benefit from switching to Salesforce and why?

What factors would you take into account in deciding whether to use Salesforce.com for your business?

Could a company run its entire business using Salesforce.com, force.com and App Exchange? Explain your answer.