CRM Suite -- Enterprise
Gold Award:
Salesforce CRM
Judging from our 2008 Product of the Year results, Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM has made the leap to the enterprise.
Once viewed as solely the domain of small and medium-sized businesses, SaaS CRM is now enterprise ready, our results suggest. San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, a pioneer of the SaaS model, won the top spot in this year's Enterprise CRM Suite category for its Salesforce CRM product. This marks the second year in a row an SaaS-based application has claimed the category, following up on last year's winner, Bozeman, Mont.-based RightNow Technologies.
Currently on its Spring '08 release, with the Winter '08 release scheduled for the fourth quarter of Salesforce.com's fiscal year, the Salesforce CRM suite got high marks from judges for its innovation and ease of use.
"Salesforce edges out the competition as the top-rated solution in [a] category with a number of very strong candidates," one of the judges wrote. "Its key differentiator is the company's track record of innovation. It has been the pioneer in establishing the SaaS deployment model for CRM solutions. More recently, it is innovating through promoting its 'platform-as-a-service initiative' -- Force.com -- a new approach to application development and distribution."
Salesforce.com offers marketing, customer service and support, and sales force automation (SFA) capabilities. It also includes Visualforce, a development and customization application. Complementary products developed by other users and Salesforce.com partners are available on the AppExchange marketplace. It also features integration with Google apps.
Salesforce.com offers multiple editions to meet the needs of different business sizes. Prices range from $9 per user per month to $250 per user per month.