Successful CRM involves many different parts of your company, starting with sales, naturally. But other customer-facing areas are also involved, such as marketing and customer service. Salesforce.com offers a technology solution for all those business areas... and more. With Salesforce CRM software as a service and our Force.com (cloud computing platform, you can take care of your customers and your budget at the same time (a bonus in today's economy). Get started in 30 days with the world's most proven and popular CRM solution.

CRM Solutions

CRM solutions help to ensure that your sales, marketing, and support organisations share a common goal, one which allows your business to achieve a new level of success.

CRM solutions from salesforce.com let you streamline and automate business processes, giving everyone in your company a complete 360 degree view of the customer, allowing for deeper analysis of critical sales and customer metrics, and ensuring that focus is targeted on the acquisition of new customers while also ensuring retention of current customers.

• CRM Solutions for Sales & Marketing. CRM helps you increase lead generation, market your products and services through multiple channels, optimise the flow and management of leads, views of all account-related data in one location, convert more leads into customers, increase productivity among sales reps, monitor the performance of your sales pipeline so you can see what is working and what's not. Effective CRM solutions lead to increased sales and keep your sales and marketing organisations focused on pipeline and increasing revenue instead of wasting valuable time manually tracking sales leads.
• CRM Solutions for Activity Management. CRM allows you to view all customer transactions, respond confidently to customer queries or communications, capture vital information about customer interactions, and manage all tasks and follow-up activities.
• CRM Solutions for Service & Support. CRM helps you collate customer support requests from all your business channels, assign support cases to the correct individual or team, leverage the best solutions to problems, escalate support cases where necessary, help customers find solutions for themselves via your website, keep to your service-level agreements, and identify areas for process improvements. All that results in better service and happier customers.
• CRM Systems for Small Business. CRM helps small businesses manage hundreds of contacts and interactions, track and manage new deals and customer relationships, helping to grow existing accounts. Whether you're on your own, maintain a modest staff, or add new employees every month, salesforce.com has a small business solution to help you keep the customers you have, win new ones and drive business growth.

The CRM solutions from Salesforce.com offer all of that... and much more (partner/channel management, Web communities, and even more besides). With award-winning interfaces, point-and-click customisation, and seamless CRM integration, salesforce.com is head-and-shoulders above the competition, and the UK's favourite CRM solution. Find out for yourself by taking a free trial today!

CRM Software vs. Web CRM

Traditional CRM software no longer drives the benefits today's businesses require. Web-based CRM, also referred to as "online CRM", "hosted CRM, or "on-demand CRM", now delivers real value to CRM users and powers most of the leading sales organisations in the UK. Today, the migration to web-based services, and specifically to salesforce.com, for their business CRM is fast outpacing the old out-dated CRM software model.

Why is this? In today's turbulent economic times, business success requires your sales organisation to be on top of every lead, every sales opportunity, and each and every interaction with customers. With web-based CRM solutions there are no big up-front software investments, no installation and zero maintenance. With the pay-as-you-go CRM model from salesforce.com, the price of CRM success is far lower than the CRM software equivalent.

• Web CRM Promises Rapid Time to Value. No big up-front capital investment in software installation offers an instant shortcut to CRM success—and immediate cost savings in the form of far faster ROI than most CRM software.
• Web CRM Offers Quick Deployment. Implement web CRM in weeks or months rather than a year or longer with traditional client/server CRM software.
• Hosted or Online CRM Makes Customisation Much Easier. With web CRM solutions, such as Salesforce CRM, basic customisations are easy to carry out, so even non-technical business users can make changes in minutes via a point-and-click interface.
• On-Demand CRM Provides Unlimited Scalability. Salesforce.com uses a multitenant approach, so there's no single instance of the software – this enables you to scale your implementation rapidly—without incurring high costs or having to wait weeks or months.
• Web CRM Features Painless Upgrades. Enjoy painless upgrades, as deployments of new CRM happen virtually in an instant, so you're always on the latest version with online CRM systems. With Salesforce CRM upgrades work happen much the same as when your favourite consumer sites, like web-based email, upgrade... all of your "stuff" is still there and working immediately after the upgrade.

To summarise:

• On-Premise CRM Software. The client/server model for on-premise CRM software requires large investment in an IT infrastructure, including the costly networks and servers required to run the CRM software. You also need to engage an entire team of IT professionals to install, deploy, and maintain the software on an on-going basis, with spikes in costs each time your CRM software vendor makes enhancements to features or functionality.
• Web CRM Solutions. Web-based CRM, hosted CRM, on-demand CRM, software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM, or cloud computing CRM—all refer to the same thing: a new CRM model which delivers CRM online via the web browser. There's no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade when you choose Salesforce CRM.

Cloud Computing & CRM

Cloud computing is one of the biggest developments the IT world has yet encountered. But what is it precisely... and what does cloud computing mean for CRM?

There's no avoiding the fact that traditional client/server CRM software is dying out; especially for IT organisations that want to make a contribution to the bottom line. The entire market is shifting away from ownership and towards a model of pay-as-you-use, freeing IT resources from unnecessary costs of software purchasing, deployment, and maintenance.

Cloud computing is another way to describe the much more appealing model of delivering business software via the internet. With online CRM solutions, you able to cut costs because you only pay to use the software instead of paying for licenses. Deploying a multitenant platform using a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained—the definition of cloud computing—makes this superior model possible.