When you're ready to revamp CRM and need to explain "why Salesforce.com" to the CEO, you must be aware of myths and preconceived notions already in place. Watch out for these big 5 items that could trip you up.
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Explaining Salesforce.com to the CEO: Top 5 Misconceptions
READER FEEDBACK
Anonymous Mon, 2009-04-13 08:19
"You get what you pay for" as justification to go with the high cost solution? A strong warning to constrain your TCO calculations to three years max? If you do the math you will see that TCO for Saas and installed software converge after 2-3 years. There are good reasons to consider a SaaS solution, unfortunately this article does not address them. This nonsense doesn't belong here.
David Taber Mon, 2009-04-13 11:30
Hi Anonymous,
You bring up a good point about the 3-year horizon for TCO: the curves do cross about there for most customers. IF you wanted to have a system forever, on-premises would be cheaper.
But in my experience, most companies tend to jettison their SFA systems after about 3 years...or wish they had. Too many things change in sales and marketing, and the goals of the SFA system may drift so far away from the original purchase criteria that the decision needs to be revised 3 years on.
Wish it weren't true, but I've seen it too often.
Jeremy Kraybill Wed, 2009-04-22 15:30
I think the #1 misconception is one that is perpetuated by this very article -- that Salesforce.com is CRM! Their platform has evolved very far beyond CRM these days into what I consider to be the best cloud computing platform for general business applications. Many of my clients don't use Salesforce.com for CRM at all, they use the platform to build low-cost, high-ROI business applications.
If I had access to the current full capabilities of Salesforce.com when I was CIO of a local startup, we would have saved 25-75% of our custom development costs for in-house web applications like commission, customer self-service and invoicing / collections. Luckily now I get to bring that message to my clients, and I love it.
Jeremy Kraybill
Austin, TX
Anonymous Thu, 2009-05-07 08:57
Have you seen Mini-Office Pro. Full Scale Business Environment. CRM is one piece of the product. But the CRM is very nice.
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