SaaS, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and SM2
We’re a software as a service (SaaS) company. A few years ago that was almost a novelty, especially in business to business applications where the trust factor was an issue as in: ‘where is my data?’ and ‘who can see my data?’, etc. Today this is much less of a factor as acceptance of SaaS is widespread, in part because the big guys like Google and Microsoft are entering the fray and other guys (gals, whatever) like Salesforce are building entire platforms on SaaS.
This was driven home to me as I started using Salesforce for CRM and started digging around in the platform. They have a really useful integration with both Google Apps and Adwords, something that will save huge amounts of time and streamline our processes in ways I couldn’t imagine not too long ago. And, for a non-programmer like me (I have the word ‘marketing’ in my title), the app is dead-simple to configure. I can build a form for free SM2 sign-ups, connect it to Adwords campaigns and track conversions. The data entered into the form is automatically added to our CRM and I can monitor all of this in a dashboard in Salesforce. With Apps integration I can use Apps to attach docs, spreadsheets and presentations to communications I have with our customers and prospects without leaving Salesforce. Really useful.
If I’m Microsoft this worries me. Salesforce is building a very powerful platform that you could literally run a business off and it’s scalable from 1 person to an enterprise. I can securely access it anywhere and really don’t require a dedicated machine for my work- it’s in the cloud.