It is important as we expand to remember our roots of simplicity and ease of use, said president of worldwide operations, Jim Steele. We cannot get out of step with our users, vision does not mean a thing without users. We can never stray. They are holding us hostage and because they have entrusted us with their customer information, we have a continual reminder. Features and functions are grounded in real-life costs and whether the customers are asking for them.
That approach means there is a close mapping between functionality development and user requirements, which was demonstrated at the Dreamforce user and developer conference. Nevertheless, Salesforce.com is at a point in its development when it has to start to balance the need to serve current needs against future growth strategies, and with every new addition, it runs the risk of introducing too much complexity and losing its ease-of-use advantage.
Likewise, its commitment to produce three incremental releases per year risks undermining the ease-of-use stance that the company was built on, even though they bring additional customer-requested functionality. There is already a developing trend among Salesforce.com users for ongoing training just to keep users up to date with the new capabilities.
At this point in its development, one of Salesforce.com’s biggest challenges is to avoid replicating the mistakes of traditional CRM players like Siebel Systems Inc which made its software overly complicated. Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff is well aware of this, and pointed out that one of the reasons traditional technology companies have failed in his view is because they got too caught up in the vision and forgot about serving current customer needs.
I have a grandiose vision for mobility and intelligence in the network, but the customers do not want to hear it so I do not give it to them. Customers want today’s technology, implemented. They have the opportunity of achieving high value at lower cost and they do not have to buy complex software and suffer the risk, he said. Listen and act, live in the here and now.
One significant advantage is that even though it offers a range of services, they are all based on a single code base. The key is there is one piece of code, not different products, and it takes on different forms according to customers needs, said Benioff.
In fact, the architecture and subscription models means all customers receive all of the services, accessible with the same user ID and password. What Salesforce.com is starting to do is market the functionality for different types of user bases, for example targeting salesforce.com at sales organizations and supportforce.com at customer service operations.
The company is making a lot of noise about the ecosystem that is developing around it. At Dreamforce, 60 partners showed off Salesforce.com additions or services, and Salesforce.com cited these as evidence that its customers are not isolated and that it is turning into an industry rather than a single company. However, managing the partner base on an ongoing basis might be challenging.
Salesforce.com’s strategy of listening to customers and incrementally adding the features and functions they request to the core service offering at no additional cost could bring it into conflict with partners whose business models are based on adding functionality, processes, or business expertise, and charging for them.
It is a long way off, but at some point Salesforce.com is likely to clash with its partner base as its development impinges on theirs and undermines their revenue stream. Although Benioff has said the company won’t get into the world of verticals, believing customers and partners are better placed to service specialist markets, partner-management is a skill Salesforce.com will have to learn, and its infant partner strategy will need further development.
