Welcome to the party Salesforce!

Salesforce finally admitted what we’ve all known for a long time -- CRM or any enterprise software was not built for the end user. Just Google “hate” or “sucks” with “CRM” or “enterprise software.” The reality is that enterprise software was built as a management tool, leaving the average user to do hours of data entry, search and research with little benefit in getting their job done. As tools and data have multiplied the user is more overwhelmed than ever before.

With the launch of SalesforceIQ for sales cloud, based on their acquisition of RelateIQ (a whole different CRM system) - Salesforce joins companies’ like ours to the new era of business software - personalized, intelligent and mobile native applications which is optimized for the user’s role and flow of work by seamlessly integrating to business applications they need to use. We say welcome to the party -- it’s about time you got here.   

What Such an App Look Like:

Such an intelligent engagement app will surface the important applications, data and insights when the user needs it. This way enterprises can get the most of out of their cloud software investments and the average user can finally love using enterprise apps.

Other leading enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP still lag far behind, but potentially have a lot more more to gain. Such an app can finally make their cloud suite offerings like Eloqua, RightNow, Concur, Hybris, Successfactors much more useful and advantageous for the average user (e.g. Sales). Check out the video

Such an intelligent mobile engagement layer must bring your system of record (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, SAP and Oracle ) your files (e.g. Box, DropBox, Drive etc) your relationship (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) and your communications (e.g. Email and Chat) contextually together at the right time what users want and need while supplying them with usage data based suggestions for action. Good bye searching, manual data entry and waiting to go back to your desk to get work done…

Such an App for salespeople, like what we’ve developed with SmarterMe, should be SmartPhone centric, reduce time spent on admin, auto update CRM and provide just in time SalesIQ in order to sell more efficiently (learn more here)

How to evaluate such apps for salespeople?

Here are some key questions to consider as you evaluate such solutions:

1. Is the app provider incented to “deeply” integrate with best of breed apps in your IT landscape vs. its own offerings?
2. What about applications that your organization uses, which are offered by its competitors - marketing, travel & expense, HR etc?
3. Is the offering the right fit for your business ? Does the app support the complexity of your business - custom fields, intelligence which is beneficial for your size of business…?
4. What if you have or will have multiple sales & marketing systems?
5. Do you really want to be locked in by one app vendor/ecosystem?