Sales Force Content

Content Management Play for Salesforce.com a Dud?

Salesforce Content Guru — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:38:35 +0000

Ever since the announcement last year of salesforce.com aquiring Koral, I just haven’t seen much happen since. Yes, it was big news but their spin on adding content management functionality to their core product suite hasn’t gotten much traction since. I’m guessing they just bundle it up with their sales module or try to cross-sell it to potential new customers.

Either way, was the purchase of Koral worth the investment for salesforce.com or did they just bail out another start-up from going belly up?

Salesforce.com’s New Group Edition

Salesforce Content Guru — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:27:54 +0000

Earlier last month salesforce.com unveiled a new small business service called salesforce group edition. This product is the successor to the company’s team edition. Now the only difference that I can tell between the old and new editions is the name. Salesforce.com is notorious for changing their brand and product names on what seems like an annual basis. Just when they think they have the right product name to cover the market they are chasing after, they end up changing it again.

Now I understand it’s common for such a fast growing company as well as an industry that continues to evolve but it does no good for the sales team and customers who can’t figure out if they own personal edition, team edition, or now group edition. Despite salesforce.com having some pretty bright product marketing managers, I beg of them to stop changing the product names!

Going back to salesforce group edition — I would have to say the only major enhancement is its tight integration with the Google AdWords PPC product. This was actually already part of the product — they’ve just done a better job of integrating it in since they purchased Keiden back in 2005.

Salesforce.com Content Exchange - WTF is It?

Salesforce Content Guru — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:59:27 +0000

According to salesforce.com’s web site, “Great content is worthless if you can’t find what you need when you need it. And usually—despite the best intentions—corporate content is a mess. In fact 85% of corporate content exists as unstructured files and documents, content that is extremely difficult to share and manage.”

My question is what’s their source? Is 85% of corporate content really true?

Their site goes on to say “Now, Salesforce Content makes it easy for users to find any corporate content with a new approach that eliminates the need for folders and complex software. Salesforce Content leverages the power of your business community and Web 2.0 capabilities, making it easy to find corporate content. Salesforce Content includes:”

Salesforce ContentExchange: a new killer app for finding and managing content
Apex Content: an extension to the Apex platform for creating content-based apps

I’m a big fan of the salesforce.com product but their product marketing is all smoke and mirrors. They blind you with product name confusion and keep changing their product names. What the heck is Apex anyhow? Salesforce.com is not a platform I’m sorry. It’s a great business CRM application so concentrate on your core product salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com Enters Content Management Market

Salesforce Content Guru — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:52:02 +0000

in April 2007, salesforce.com formally announced the acquisition of a Web 2.0 content management start up by the name of Koral. Since then, salesforce.com has branded this new product none other than salesforce content which of course is the domain name and website of which my site resides. Hats off to them for choosing such an amazing product name.

This is the second such startup salesforce.com has acquired over the past few years the other one being Keiden which was basically a Google AdWords plug-in to the salesforce.com product. Koral was only a nine person startup so the cost and effort of absorbing them and their product into salesforce.com was minimal. This is always a plus as dealing with any large mergers and acquisitions can always slow down a company and leave product support on the wayside. A prime example of this is the numerous acquisitions Oracle has done. Keiden was a three-man company which was even easier to absorb than Koral.

Now salesforce.com is going to have to do some major integration with their existing flagship product before anyone is can be remotely interested in the content management aspect of salesforce.com. Part of their marketing genius has to do with announcing and branding a new product line months before it’s even ready for general availability. This gives the sales team and overall market a chance to sell and absorb the new product essentially testing the waters before it’s rolled out. Nobody wants to be the first customer as the guinea pig especially if they are already heavily invested in the salesforce.com product.

If salesforce.com can pull off this massive integration I can see it as being a great product. Since salesforce.com currently does not offer versioning and revision control, it makes it difficult to use as a content management system. That is a necessity when it comes to managing your content. If you update a version of your website or document and can’t roll back to the previous version you’re in trouble. Good luck salesforce, there is a market for this product and hopefully you can fill the gap