this is an article about the CRM business, formerly dominated by Siebel, and the 2 new upstarts salesforce.com and netsuite using Adwords.
Special report: Google - the new CRM front line?
But will Google eventually move into the online CRM space itself? For the moment, two of the leading on demand CRM firms are working alongside Google. But could Google be tempted to add a CRM-like application to its enterprise portfolio in the future? Certainly there appears to be a commercial opportunity that both NetSuite and Salesforce.com can see.
The announcements from the two vendors came within 24 hours of one another with both sides claiming it was co-incidence. “There are some major differences from the looks of things-like we wrote ours, and they had to acquire someone!” said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson. “It's not that hard to do. And ours is free. There is no additional cost to users. And finally, it's hard – near impossible - to do "word to close" when they have no order data in
Salesforce.com.”
So is Google a new front on the CRM battlefield? “Salesforce.com and NetSuite have each identified a new niche business need that addresses a very specific business process that may be relevant to only a small number or very specialised group of people in an organisation,” suggested AMR Research’s Robert Bios.
“Each provider has taken a different approach to fulfilling that need. NetSuite has rolled new functionality into the base product while salesforce.com is selling its newly acquired application as a $300 per month per company add-on. While one could debate in circles as to whether paid search functionality should be part of a core CRM suite or not, both companies were able to rapidly address a new business requirement with incremental functionality that can be rapidly made available to the entire customer base.”
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that his company was often asked the need for a service, which would allow the customers to make online interactions with customers from start to finish. "The problem...is trying to get information from Google AdWords to knowing who the customer is can be kind of a difficult thing. You tend to lose the link between CRM (customer relationship management) and Google ads", he explained.
But perhaps the real interest in the announcement was the deepening relationship between Google and Salesforce.com, suggested Ovum’s Bradshaw. “Though Salesforce has said it is likely to launch equivalent capabilities for Yahoo! and MSN, it has been clear for a while that there is a degree of mutual admiration between Salesforce and Google, as natural allies,” he argued. “It does worry us a bit that Google's continued success has led to talk of an “anti-Google” movement that purportedly includes Yahoo! and Microsoft. We don't think that's at all constructive.
“This announcement also marks another step towards the merging of software-as-a-service and business services, potentially a highly-disruptive force in the software and IT services industries. Not many people think of Experian as a major software-as-a-services player, but it delivers decisioning and analytical software on top of its credit ratings services. We expect to see far more companies like Experian blending the two worlds, and potentially shutting out more “conventional” players in the market.”
insightexec.com |
