Just after Microsoft declared that it would finally get on the bandwagon and start putting more focus on developing SaaS (Software as a Service) applications, Google announced that it may partner with the SaaS leader and innovator Salesforce.com.

This was one heck of a smart move for SalesForce.  Now all of the search engine marketers, who spent approximately $35 billion last year, have a serious incentive to integrate SalesForce into their operations. 

According the Sales Force, the merger would:

The new offering delivers seamless integration with the leading advertising platform, allowing users to buy keywords and instantly create ads directly within Salesforce that are compliant with Google’s editorial policies. With Salesforce for Google AdWords, companies can easily correlate ad clicks with sales metrics such as leads, opportunities, deals, and revenue. Customers can deploy Salesforce for Google AdWords to:

• Simplify the process of search marketing
• Track and correlate clicks to leads, sales opportunities, and deals
• Measure exactly which ads and keywords are generating leads and results
• Increase the ROI of their online advertising programs
• Easily manage the entire process directly within Salesforce

We knew SalesForce was going to become more important to businesses in the future, which is why we began in-depth training and offering implementation to our clients over the past year.  But we had no idea that SalesForce was in talks to partner with Google and couldn’t be more pleased!

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According to a recent survey by the Business Software Alliance, 35% of all software installed on computers is pirated software. The theft, they say, amounts to $40 billion in global losses.

It seems that the more expensive software is, the more likely people are to steal it. Although they say only 35% of software is stolen, they also state that for every $2 worth of software purchased, $1 worth of software is stolen.

Do people want to steal software, or are they backed into a corner by the high cost? The exorbitant prices of critical business software like Microsoft office is beyond the budgets of many people in wealthy countries, let alone those in countries where poverty is rampant and business owners are doing whatever they can to stay on top.

This isn’t to say that stealing software is acceptable – it’s not. But is there another way to create quality software without charging people more than they can afford?

Many companies are moving to the SaaS (Software as a Service) model of profiting from software. With SaaS, software isn’t sent via CD or downloaded, it’s accessed online and users pay a monthly subscription. This cuts down on piracy drastically.

It also cuts down on up-front costs for users and can increases profits for vendors. Using software as a service, customers quite often pay more that they would have for software over time in monthly fees than if they would have purchased it up front. But because monthly subscription costs are more manageable, subscribers can easily make the payment.

As we’ve mentioned before, SalesForce.com has been one of the most successful SaaS companies. At first, the idea seemed ridiculous and foreign to many, but now it’s become apparent just how forward-thinking SalesForce was from the get-go.

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The huge surge of popularity in SalesForce.com’s CRM ‘non-software’ shed some interesting light on the desperate need for an intuitive customer relationship management tool in the business marketplace.  If your company has more than one person handling customer service inquiries, some sort of CRM application is a must have.

But how exactly are company’s using CRM software like SalesForce to grow their businesses? 

• To build better customer relationships – Customer like to know that they are more than just an account number.  When they call in for pre-sales questions or for service, they want to feel like you remember them, their questions, and their specific issues that they discussed in previous calls

• Identifying trends and problem areas – Because CRM’s can collect so much statistical data, you may discover business trends that lead to money making opportunities or prevent serious revenue drains.

• Better reporting – in order to set goals, you’ve got to have measurable data.  Using a CRM, you can track turnaround time on customer service inquiries, send and track satisfaction surveys, and visually graph your goals through the CRM’s built-in charting and reporting mechanisms. 

There are quite a few different types of CRM software out there, all with varying degrees of features and benefits.  There are free CRM applications, software based CRM applications, and Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM’s like SalesForce where you have the benefit of utilizing multi-million dollar software for a small monthly use cost.    

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Salesforce.com is very proud of the fact that it is NOT software. In fact, the word “Software,” encircled by the red Ghostbusters circle and slash is its logo. But isn’t software a “good” thing? This leaves many people wondering… if it’s not software, then what is it?

Salesforce.com IS in fact a software application—it’s just not one that you buy or license. It’s one that you pay a fractional ongoing fee to use, also called “software-as-a-service,” or SaaS. This begs the question, why ‘rent’ software when you can just own it? It’s a good question, and one worth exploring further.

Cost:

Intricate software with lots of functionality costs a lot of money to develop. Teams of visionaries, programmers, project managers, database administrators, and countless others spend years developing some of the more complex software applications—hence the steep price. With SaaS, you pay monthly, quarterly, or yearly for the use of the software, and often only for the functionality that you use.

Updates:

Any good software will require updates. Times change, technology changes, and in the online world, this seems to happen at a very rapid pace. When you purchase software, you often get that version, and that’s it. You might get free or lower cost updates, but software companies would prefer to sell you the new version all over again. When using SaaS, you generally have access to updates because you are generally always plugged in to the latest version.

Speed:

SaaS applications are normally web based applications as opposed to those that you install on your computer or server. Web applications do tend to be a bit slower than desktop software and that can be annoying. Even with super high speed connections, there can be a bit of a lag.

Information ownership:

With any software, the functionality of the information is essentially tied to the tool itself. If you stop renting the Software-as-a-service, you lose the functionality of the data. You’ll likely be able to extract the data, but then will need to plug it in to some other software application should you decide to switch. The fact that the functionality of the information is dependent on the software is the same with any software that you may own; the difference is that you don’t continually pay monthly fees for the use of it though some software does include an annual licensing fee.

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Salesforce.com recently launched CampaignForce, a new type of CRM app designed specifically for politicians to manage their campaigns.  The new app gives campaign managers a slew of benefits including, a web based single point of access to campaign-related and a view of important info such as polls, fundraising progress, media buzz, etc.

If demand drives innovation, then it’s interesting to note that SalesForce.com, the leading CRM application that allows business to understand their client base in order to better address the needs of their customers, began offering services in 2000.   Now, 7 years later, enough demand has finally led to the launch of the same type of application for the political arena. 

Can CampaignForce do for politics what it has done for businesses?  Let’s hope so.  The intuitive information collection process and instant mashing up and comparative analysis of different types of data available through Salesforce has a tendency to really open the eyes of businesses about what their customers really want.  Information is easy to ignore when there is no real way of seeing it clearly and analyzing it effectively in real time. 

This is certainly the year for e-lections.  From the widely publicized Barack Obama fan video on You Tube depicting Hillary Clinton as on the classic 1984 big screen, to candidates creating profiles on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, to the launch of CampaignForce, the web is a major force in today’s campaigns. 

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