Customer Relationship Management:Next Level Enterprise growth is in going Social

By Atul Chandra Pandey

Senior Practice Engagement Manager - Manufacturing, Infosys

Dreamforce 2011 concluded last week in San Francisco. With close to 40,000+ attendance, this is indeed "the" event in the cloud industry and a living demonstration of the passion and mass-scale following Salesfore.com (SFDC) has created in the marketplace today.

While one can remember Dreamforce for so many reasons, what really makes the event stand out is the sheer energy and passion with which Salesforce.com positions the new offerings. Two years back it was Chatter, last year it was Database.com and collaboration, this year it's "Social Enterprise". This is the new mantra Salesforce.com is promoting and no one can do this better than the man who has led this from the front - Marc Benioff. Marc's passion and energy is unmatchable and like every year, this year also he made sure that the stage is set right to deliver the message with maximum impact. Opening of Dreamforce with "Aloha / Hawaiian" chant followed by heavy Metallica score and flashing Marquee messages on "Salesforce + You = Like", created "rock-show" euphoria - typical of Dreamforce keynotes - and then Marc announced the advent of Social Enterprise and how the new Salesforce.com is centered / focused to fuel this revolution.

This year, the limelight of the show and future is on the products / offerings linked to Social Enterprise theme - Radian 6 (social data platform - mine, analyze, engage) , Heroku , Data.com, Siteforce and Touch Interface (touch.salesforce.com) with Chatter and Mobile expanding the collaboration and on-the-go computing messages. Of all these, the Touch interface seems to really standout with promise of true touch interface (powered by HTML 5) which will really expand adoption of SFDC in enterprise user communities and take the entire UI messaging to the next level.

With 275+ partners at the Cloud Expo, SFDC ecosystem reverberated with matching enthusiasm announcing / showcasing host of bolt on solutions in sourcing, procurement, sales & marketing, productivity management and collaboration. While bulk of these have been offered by traditionally small and medium companies - offering very niche products / services - this year Infor and Ariba seems to have joined the Salesforce.com bandwagon. Charles Phillips - Infor CEO (erstwhile Oracle President) announced on stage Infor's move into cloud on Salesforce.com with their new offering Inforce.

The announcements on Radian 6 with customer showcases from Dell, Gatorade and Symantec showing the power of social media mining to drive customer responsiveness and growth is a compelling proposition for driving enterprise growth. This is real and is growing at a faster pace than we would have thought.

So, how are Infosys' strategic goals aligned with Salesforce.com's initiatives?

1. SFDC's "Social Enterprise" theme alignment with Infosys' Building Tomorrow's Enterprise (BTE) Theme: Our BTE theme - especially one around Digital Consumers is in complete harmony with the SFDC theme and is creating perfect opportunities for us to help clients with their digital transformation journeys. (e.g. our Digital Marketing Framework is perfect example here)

2. Strive to address "whitespace" offerings complementing SFDC stack: While SFDC stack offers horizontal functionalities; we can address the whitespaces all around (Analytics, Functional apps, biz frameworks - customer care).

3. Differentiated offerings to sustain the market momentum on SFDC for growth: We are looking to tap this area with our differentiated services / offerings and are seeing significant opportunities for growth on PRM and Force.com.

4. Positioning SFDC for our platform offerings: New SFDC positioning (Radian 6 and Heroku) offers compelling proposition for our Business Platform offerings.

5. Leveraging our development / consulting base on SFDC: As the focus shifts tremendously from CRM to platform to social enterprise, we are geared up to serve this demand at all levels.

Comments

Thanks for mentioning us. Dreamforce was an amazing event and we were so thrilled to be a part of it.

Best wishes,
Trish, Community Manager
Radian6

Posted by: Trish (@Dayngr) | September 8, 2011 9:58 PM

Dreamforce was, undoubtedly, a conference worth attending; specially the interesting and insightful conversation between Marc Benioff and Eric Schmidt.

Sometimes, a thought process is ahead of its time and much advanced than available technology can comprehend. However, as technology is catching up, Salesforce has its vision clear on how to leverage the same to build tomorrow’s enterprises.

Why is Salesforce what it is today because they have taken it beyond the conventional CRM!

It is the vision to carryout business activities around a customer, more than just technology, that has helped them become the best in the industry.

I am glad, organizations are realizing the vitality of massive and complex networked ecosystem where essentially people are at the center around whom products and services can be created and delivered; which demands businesses to become social in every possible way.

Thanks to Salesforce, as each step they take, is directly or indirectly helping its clients to get into newer dimensions of being social. To name a few, the new chatter services now involves customers which was earlier restricted to employees. Touch.Salesforce is yet another example of reaching a new milestone in making CRM comprehensive and user friendly. The touch success adds yet another refined node to the networked world.

Benioff presented a strong vision for the social enterprise. Most importantly, Salesforce is not stopping at their best and their innovations showcase their hunger for better services than what is seen as best already!

Burberry is a classic example of a century old yet social business which is “totally connected to everyone who touches their brand!”

People at Infosys, as mentioned in the article above, are excited looking at the way businesses transform with integration of technology. Not to stop at conventional CRMs, enterprises are looking forward to connect with each of their customers.

Posted by: Satyam Gambhir | September 9, 2011 12:47 PM