Business Tools I am Thankful for: Salesforce.com

Why we are big fans of the SaaS CRM system

As you might have noticed, at OpenView Venture Partners, we are great fans of the SaaS CRM software Salesforce.com. Our familiarity with the software is manifold: besides having a Salesforce implementation for our own deal management purposes, we also built up a considerable wealth of experience in structuring, customizing and managing Salesforce.com instances for software sales teams at our portfolio companies. In all instances, we find Salesforce.com a great “out-of-the-box” tool that really helps to set up a sales organization, along with the implementation of a rigorous, scalable sales process and/or the eventual adoption of a sales methodology. This is a testament to the software’s constantly evolving feature set, relatively “easy to use” user interface, and extremely extensible scripting language (Apex).

We like Salesforce.com a lot, not only because we have a lot of experience with it, but also because it is very easy to train new sales people with the software. The set up of the system is inclined to help instill good skills and process-driven habits in new sales people when they are exposed to it as part of their training.

Furthermore, with the great availability of administrator’s courses, online tutorials and a vibrant user community, we have great confidence that our portfolio companies will possess enough expertise and experience to manage their own Salesforce.com instance over time.

It is amazing how CRM systems in general have come so far. Lauren Carlson at SoftwareAdvice is putting together a great interactive timeline of the industry. Of course, for us one of the most important moments is the advent of Salesforce.com in 1999.

 

We are thankful that a great product like Sf.com has survived the dot com bubble, and is continuously improving to give us a great tool and platform for managing and scaling sales and marketing teams.