Entered CNET Catalog: 06/05/2002
SKU: SALESFORCEPROFESSIONALEDITION
Manufacturer: Salesforce.com
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 05/19/2004
Salesforce.com is not perfect, however. Its flexibility is also a liability, in that its many options can be overwhelming. And although outsourcing critical infrastructure to ASPs (application service providers) has generally proven effective at mitigating TCO (total cost of ownership), your mileage may vary. According to research firm Gartner, "The longer you use ASPs and the more users you have, the more expensive it becomes." Perhaps worse, you lock your data into hardware and software that you don't actually own. Nonetheless, your small business will also get more features, ease of use, and reliability out of Salesforce.com than it probably could afford for full-time, in-house support. To set up your company on Salesforce.com, you begin by selecting your country and language (Salesforce.com supports 11 languages). After entering basic contact information, you select one of the application's many templates--for example, Manufacturing, Professional Services, Media & Advertising--to further customize your installation. These templates are based in part on mature business processes developed by Salesforce.com's past customers--a nice feature.
Once logged in, you'll arrive at your business's home page, a collection of personalized, customizable information grouped under headers such as Calendar, Tasks, and Accounts. Across the top of the page is the tabbed navigation system. First-time users may panic at the vast list of navigation tabs, but you can easily customize the view and remove the tabs you don't need.
The system is designed to accommodate a variety of typical small-business users, from sales and marketing to customer support, and the navigation tabs--including Campaigns, Leads, Accounts, and Opportunities--support all the CRM functions you would expect. You can edit the names of existing tabs and add custom tabs for processes not already built into the system. The customization features are manageable by someone who is not an IT professional, although the flexibility of the system may be a little daunting. Nonetheless, after you spend a little time in Salesforce.com, you'll get the hang of it.
The Opportunities screen. One of many configurable tabs, this one keeps your team up-to-date on new avenues for sales.
If you don't, there's help. We recommend that you take advantage of Salesforce.com's online tutorials, which will help you put the puzzle pieces together. Since the ultimate value of a CRM system is its bird's-eye view of your sales process, it's best to understand the interactions and dependencies before you get too deep into configuration. We evaluated the Professional edition of Salesforce.com, which would be the right version for a company of about 12 to 15 users. The Team and Enterprise editions support fewer and more users (and features), respectively.
Salesforce.com's features have been carefully thought out. Most of them are available in packaged CRM software, but no other hosted service offers as robust a feature set. The system includes modules for:
- Integrated sales force automation: This module includes lead management and helps define a sales process for your entire organization to follow.
- Customer service and support: This component takes you from initiation to resolution in managing a customer contact.
- Marketing automation: This is a strong module that helps manage marketing campaigns and analyze success.
- Document management: This is a common document repository for customer materials.
- Contract management: This is a central repository for your customer contacts. It also helps create and track contracts until they are signed.
- Product catalog management: This lets you update and manage your product portfolio.
- Analytics: With these tools, Salesforce.com provides useful insight into your sales data.
Salesforce.com can generate many reports that show how well--or how badly--your business is running.
If the off-the-Net version of Salesforce isn't flexible enough for you, there's sForce, an open Web services API that allows developers to write code that links existing applications to Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com also sells Studio, a customization platform for the Salesforce.com interface. Additionally, there is an offline edition of Salesforce.com that is useful if you want access to your system when you are not on the Internet. Finally, Salesforce.com can sync with Outlook or the Palm Desktop, though we didn't test-drive those features.
But there's a caveat. Despite Salesforce.com's excellent business tools, it became clear to us after using the system and talking with other customers that to take full advantage of the application, you'll need to plan ahead and map out your business processes before tinkering with your Salesforce setup. One customer we spoke with said that he had abandoned the application for a while because the processes were not set up correctly the first time. Another said that he had changed processes and didn't know how to alter Salesforce.com to match. Salesforce.com's online tutorials are great primers. Free, live training is available on a variety of topics, and you can purchase training geared toward specific product features. You can also call for customer support at no extra charge (which makes sense, since you pay for the product monthly). Finally, if you are really struggling, you can consider hiring Salesforce.com's Services group to come in and customize the system to match your business needs.
Salesforce.com should provide excellent uptime. We experienced no outages, although verifiable figures were not made available for this review. The company also has mature storage and backup procedures.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3
User Rating: 
1/10
Horrible Customer Service! Not User friendly
Pros: You can access it anywhere as long as you have an internet connection
Cons: You have to purchase all these extras (from Salesforce partners of course) to do mass email, territory management, product inventory, etc... & they are NOT cheap!
*If Salesforce doesn't fit your needs you are STUCK in a "LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT"
Review:
I bought the group edition when I first started with Salesforce.com for the $99/year. Well it didn't seem to do what I needed it to do so I thought. Well my Salesforce rep said I needed to upgrade to the professional edition which I did which it is now $780/year & still it doesn't do what I need it to do. The training is horrendous. I have printed the over 1,000 page manual & I have taken the online courses and still I can't figure out out to create the userfields I need or run the reports I need. Once again I spoke to my salesforce rep & once again he says I need to upgrade to the next version which is quite a bit more expensive to truly get all the features that I need. When I asked my rep what the penalty fees are for ending my contract he says that I have a 2-yr legally binding contract till the year 11/2010 so I will be paying $780 a year till then... Unless you are a computer wiz I would not recommend salesforce. Take a look at the manual before deciding to purchase but understand the manual does NOT give you step by step directions to get you where you want to be.
User Rating: 
4/10
Carefully plan for this one - professional version
Pros: Flexibility - lots of add on products out there do to size of install base
Cons: product requires IT background. The parameters are very complex -even their own basic support teams (costa rica) do not understand them. It is really development platform advantage anticpate paying install fees equal to the license fees.
Review:
This is a product that requires a power user of IT staff to install and keep it running. If you have a power user on staff they can get the job done but it will be a full time job for them. Sales force.com is a CRM/devlopment tool it is not a feature product. There is a large market for expensive consulting and pro services help so IT staff like to install the system. IT is a career move for them. That is why the focus in on cloud computing etc instead of actually references to improvement in their customers sales teams. Before buying get references from users and sales executives to verify that the product really helped them.
User Rating: 
2/10
This is the worst CRM ive ever used
Pros: On line access anywhere
Cons: browser based, cant go from lead to lead with out going back to the lead list. when deleting a lead it takes you to a completly differnt lead list. The need to hit the 'back arrow" on your browser 3 to 6 times to get back to your list. can go on...
Review:
Buy act or goldmine... do not waist your time wtih this program. It works as if it was written 20 years ago.
