Salesforce.com

[Dominic Connor]

An outfit I help out with is being pitched to by Salesforce.com for a project that is very important to them.

I've never done business with these people and although I know the system can do most of what they want and have some confidence that the tweeks will work, I don't know how much to trust Salesforce.com, the company.

Their sales exec is very credible, but then again that's his job and this is an account they will take seriously and try at least a bit to make a success.

What I don't know is how much to trust them, do they have a track record in shafting people, suddenly coming up with "extras" that that were not in the bid but that you actually need, tech support that is far worse after you've singed than before, etc.

I'm not expecting them to be angels, but relative to other IT suppliers, has anyone experience of how good/bad they are ?

[original PM]

you need to be more specific - salesforce do a few different products

are you looking for the whole suite of products?

[mudskipper]

Doesn't one of our regulars belong to them?

[northernladuk]

I will be happy to help but first....

Could I have two references.
Meet face to face in Glasgow to discuss possibility of helping you
I required a 25% cut of the action

Once I we have that agreed I will get back to you... I promise!

[Ticktock]

Overall they're pretty good.

I've been focused on deployments of their CRM for a while.
They have quite a range of features available within this, but the sensible approach tends to be to start small, and add functionality over time.
They provide "Relationship Managers" to their clients, who focus on advising clients as to what features they may want to use, depending on business needs, basically providing after-sales support.

Of course, there is always going to be an element of selling add-ons, but the business approach does seem to focus on creating "Customer Excellence", ensuring that clients get what they need to drive their business and so create case studies for the future.

A big feature of Salesforce is how customisable it is - every organisation I know who have deployed it generally invest, either internally or outsourced, in developers to create their custom build.

Final shameless little plug - I've been focussing on delivering training to clients to support their initial deployment of Salesforce for the past 4 years, including to a number of large multinational "famous names". I'd be more than happy to discuss on PM how I could help this "outfit" in the future.

[original PM]

on another note I did not use salesforce but used a company from the US called Parature -- much better!

[VectraMan]

I've no direct experience myself, but I've worked in several places where people seemed to spend a good part of their day complaining about SalesForce.

[Ticktock]

I've no direct experience myself, but I've worked in several places where people seemed to spend a good part of their day complaining about SalesForce.

Salesforce is a software tool, like any other.

The major difference is that for some roles, particularly Sales, it's normally expected to be one of their major tools that they'll be using all day, every day, so the impact can be pretty heavy.
Quite often they're now being asked to enter information that they used to jot on a piece of paper, or not bother recording at all, so they see their workload going up.

One of the common issues is that the benefits of using the tool haven't been explained to the users, or else they're being asked to do things that don't actually have a benefit, because the company have seen that a feature is available (and quite often free) so insist on implementing it without thinking about whether it helps the users.
Both Senior Management and IT can be guilty about this feature creep. Management might want something available to them and don't map / plan how it will impact on frontline. IT may see something "cool" and don't think about whether it's actually useful or applies to business needs.

I could go on, but I'd have to start charging for my time.