Google Apps Integrated with Salesforce CRM
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Apr 15, 2008

Salesforce.com and Google have long been associated by their common endeavor to provide business applications over the Internet, or as they call it, 'in the cloud'. Recently, Salesforce.com has launched its 'Salesforce for Google Apps' package. This CRM and office utility combo will allow users to avail of essential applications for better communications, without installation of any software

What does the solution offer?

The 'Salesforce for Google Apps' solution combines email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging, etc. with CRM (sales, marketing, service and support, partners, etc.). The idea behind this package is to enable users to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web.

Uniting CRM with office productivity applications is in itself not a new idea. The major differentiator with Salesforce's product is, there's no need for installation as it's available on-demand.

Salesforce.com also will be offering support package in summer of this year. It will include integrated telephone end user support, unified billing and provisioning, enhanced platform APIs, additional third party applications, and advanced Google Apps functionality.

Will it work?

The solution is bound to attract interest, especially among smaller organizations, which want to avail of the benefits of an efficient CRM solution without the high costs typically involved with them. However, with Microsoft set to launch the on-demand version (currently on-demand version is available only through its partners) of its MS Dynamics CRM (MS Dynamics Live CRM), the Google-Salesforce offering might find it difficult to entice too many new customers.

In the end it will boil down to whether the Salesforce-Google offering is able to garner enough attention, and prove itself sufficiently before the release of Dynamics Live.

Availability

'Salesforce CRM for Google Apps' is available to Salesforce.com customers at no additional cost. The 'Salesforce for Google Apps Support' package will be available in summer of this year at a cost of US $10 per user, per month.

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