Case study 2salesforce.com

Rui Zhao

1.What are the advantages and disadvantages of the software-as-a-service model?

The software-as-a-service is means that company can use the internet

resources to opposed to software bought and installed on machines locally. That

company need to rent the software from a company who sell the CRM service.

And then pay for it every month. This is a developed system and all the things

what companies should do is use this CRM system easily. There are a lot of

advantages of the software-as-a-service model. The software for a big company

are always very expensive, at same time, they should buy a lot of hardwares to

support the software working, the operation cost and the maintenance charge

are very expensive too, this is a huge pay expense for a company, most

companies do not have enough budget for buying the software. That’s why they

need the software-as-a-service model. They can rent the software by the CRM

company, they do not need hardware for subscribers to purchase. It will be

cheaper than by the software generally. Second, the software-as-a-service is easy

to use, the company which rent the serivice can learn how to use it very fast.

Companies are usually acquainted with the software by one month and got the

proceeds in several month later. It’s very fast and easy for a company. So all in

all, the software-as-a-service model is “no hardware for subscribers to purchase,

scale, and maintain, no operating systems, database servers, orapplication

service to insall, no consultants and staff, and no system is accessible via a

standard Web browser, and this service could be continually updates its

software behind scenes”. All of these factors are the advantage of software-as-a-

service model. There are also some disadvantege of the software-as-a-service

model. First, the price of this model is based on the price of software. If the

company who produce the product of the software decrease the price, and many

companies have their budget to buy the

software, then they will not need the service system. Second, the price of the

service is still expensive for some small companies in developing country. For

example, in China, companies should have a lot of training to use the system, but

it’s will cost much money, and at same time, 60 dollars per month is still

expensive for small companies to rent. These are some advantages and

disadvantages for this model.

2. What are some of the challenges facing salesforce as it continues its growth? How well will it be able to meet those challenges?

There are three challenges facing Salesforce as it continues its growth. First,

the competition is increased, both from traditional industry leaders and new

challengers hoping to replicate Salesforce’s success. The second challenges is to

expand its business model into other areas. Finally, the availability is the third

challenge, the occasional outages occurred may let the subscribers think that

their dependency on software as a service. The Salesforce.com are already

prepared to face these challenges. They still have to increase their size and

market share to catch up their competitors. Salesforce.com has find their

partners to develop their product which can use in new areas. Salesforce.com

also “opened up its Force.com application development platform to other

independent software developers”. Finally, in order to solve the third challenge,

Salesforce.com “provides tools to assure customers about its system reliability

and also offers PC applications that tie into their services so users can work

offline”.

3.What kinds of businesses could benefit from switching to Saleforce and why?

IT companies are more easy to benefit from switching to Saleforce, but there

are several requirements. The company do not produce the real product, all the

products they sell can be upload to the internet and easy to download or browse.

That’s will help them to decrease the cost and they can rent the product to

people. Comsumers should subscibe their product every month or year. The

company who ues the cloud computing are easy to switching to Saleforce. The

cloud computing is a technology which use the internet to collect all the PC

resource together, to save or comupting datas. The CRM is one of the business

which can ues the cloud computing to save all the information of comsumers. So

if these kinds of business switching to Salesforce, they will benefit a lot because

they can gave the comsumer online service and help them limit the budget a lot.

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

The first factor is whether the Salesforce is fit my business, does the service I

got from Salesforce can help my company a lot. Because there are several

company are rent the CRM service, and there are some different betweent these

service, I will figure out wich one is more fit my business. For example, if my

company is in China, I should know whether the CRM which the Salesforce give is

localization or have the Chinese national mind to do the business. Second is the

price of the service. How many choice I can have, as my reasearch,

Salesforce.com have 5 prices choice. They are 5 dollars, 17 dollars, 65 dollars,

125 dollars and 250 dollars. Then I can choose the best one for me. Third, I have

to know how the after-sale service working, such like how long does the

Salesforce.com update their software.

MIS in action

1. what are the most popular applications on App Exchange? What kinds of

processes do they support.

Conga composer is a software which can save time creating sophisticated

documents and reports in Salesforce. user can “print, attach or email

custom quotes, proposals, account plans and more from multiple objects

and related lists by uesd conga composer”. Incontact is another popular

applications on App Exchange, it can “increases productivity through

screen pops”. All most all the software on the App Exchange is try to help

the user to use the Salesforce more easy, convenient and fast

2. Could a company run its entire business using Salesforce.com and App

Exange?

No. Because these two company are not include all kind of service that a

company need. They also have some partner company which has

developed other useful software to help people doing their business. For

example, google is the best company which use the cloud-computing

technology to save informations, They give some service that these two

company can’t give.

3. What kinds of companies are most likely to use App Exchange? What does

this tell you about how Salesforce.com is being used?

The small company are more likely to use App Exchange, because it’s very

easy to download more than 800 applications from the website. Different

application don’t have a lot contect with each other, and it have no bad

influence if you just use only one or several parts from the system. It does

tell me that Salesforce is a very impeccable system and it’s working for

companies which need a complete CRM service. People can find all kind of

resource or software online and use them very easily.

Sources

Wikipidia, “salesforce.com” , 2009.9.16 http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Special%3A%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&search=salesforce&go=

%E8%BF%9B%E5%85%A5

Cloudcomputing-China, 2008.11

http://www.cloudcomputing-china.cn/Article/cloudcomputing/

200811/213.html

Twoyue, “Salesforce.com” 2010.02.02

http://baike.baidu.com/view/1455163.html