TMCnews Featured Article
July 22, 2010
Salesforce.com to Provide CRM for Facebook's Fast Growing Sales
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
As many are still trying to climb out of a deep recession; Facebook is celebrating tremendous sales growth. In fact, this sales growth is getting beyond what Facebook (News - Alert) can handle on its own and the social networking giant has turned to an industry expert: Salesforce.com.
The enterprise cloud computing company announced that it has been selected by Facebook to manage its sales operations. Facebook will rely on Salesforce CRM to maximize the value out of each customer interaction.
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook commented in a statement: "Facebook and salesforce.com share a common vision for helping people connect and share information more efficiently. Salesforce.com's (News - Alert) cloud model was the perfect fit for us - with our current growth trajectory and future sales goals, we needed a product that will scale with our growing business."
Facebook spent some time evaluating its options, including the pros and cons of adding enhancements to its own system or turning to a cloud computing CRM system. The company selected the Sales Cloud 2 solution as a result of its inherent benefits, including cloud computing, a quick implementation time and the ability to scale as Facebook continues on a rapid growth path.
The arrival of Cloud 2, the increasingly collaborative, mobile and real-time next generation of cloud computing services, is said to have stimulated the development of an entirely new economy. Now, as demonstrated here, some of the biggest names in technology today are ready to participate in itThe Salesforce solution has been deployed across the sales operation teams within Facebook, as well as within developer relations to automate the complex workflow and approval process. The new system now integrates with about half a dozen systems already in place.
Marc Benioff (News - Alert), chairman and CEO, salesforce.com noted: "Facebook joins the thousands of companies managing their enterprise sales teams in the cloud, enabling them to focus on their fast growing business rather than the hardware and software to support it."
In other Facebook news, the company recently announced it has hit 500 million users, a definite milestone. CEO Mark Zuckerberg (News - Alert) is set to sit down with Diane Sawyer for an interview, in which he is likely to publicly announce the milestone and work on improving the public image. Facebook has been under fire as of late due to privacy issues.
Salesforce announced this spring purchased Jigsaw for $14 million, adding to its growing empire and extending its value in the marketplace.
This latest partnership between two power players is sure to continue to drive the strength of Salesforce in the global market, while Facebook will be better positioned to leverage its substantial growth. While it is true the social networking giant is suffering from a few image problems, its popularity alone is likely to bring it out of this latest funk.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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