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Answers to all your burning questions about salesforce.com
General Product Questions
Enterprise Edition Questions
Group Edition Questions
Administration Questions
How to Get Started Questions
Offline Operation Questions
Reporting Questions
Importing Questions
Security and
Scalability Questions
Registration Questions
Q. What is sales force automation?
A. Sales force automation (SFA) gives companies the tools and insight they need to maximize
revenues and cut operational costs. Salesforce, SFA enables oversight of your sales pipeline and
delivers instant snapshots of key sales metrics, such as revenue forecasts, sales pipeline, and
performance over competitors. As a result, sales teams can generate accurate forecasts of revenue
and customer demand, eliminate costly pipeline bottlenecks, and effectively collaborate to
transform prospects into profitable customers. Flexible customization allows companies to easily
configure the application to match their own unique sales methodology or sales process. Because
every lead is recorded, automatically routed to the right sales organization and sales
representative, and tracked through the pipeline in real time, no opportunities are missed.
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Q. What is customer service and support?
A. The Salesforce Service & Support application enables companies to forge strong
relationships and increase customer satisfaction while simultaneously streamlining customer service
operations and keeping costs down. Salesforce Service & Support includes comprehensive
multichannel service capabilities. As a result, companies can gain valuable insight into the source
of top customer inquiries, identify up-sell/cross-sell opportunities, and ensure that no customer
inquiries are dropped. Additionally, a centralized knowledgebase of customer solutions helps
support teams retain organizational expertise, standardize solutions handling, improve response
time, and shorten the ramp up time for new reps. Easy integration with call center and back office
systems enables companies to deliver more effective customer service through a single point of
contact. Regardless of whether service agents are located down the corridor, at home, or on the
other side of the world, they can manage their time and tasks with Salesforce Service &
Support.
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Q. What is marketing automation?
A. With Salesforce Marketing, companies can maximize the return on their marketing investment
with detailed tracking, reporting, and analytical tools that provide precise measurements on what
marketing campaigns are performing, why they are performing, and the types of leads they attract.
Trade shows, direct mail, advertising, and promotions can all be tracked, analyzed, and optimized
so that the best possible leads are delivered to your sales organization. Integrated lead
management ensures that leads are routed to the appropriate sales rep and monitored in real time,
so that no leads are dropped. Additionally, marketing teams can optimize market segmentation,
analyze existing customers for cross-sell/up-sell opportunities, standardize marketing and sales
communications, and gain critical insight into lifetime customer value.
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Q. What does salesforce.com do?
A. Salesforce.com flagship offering is a customizable, on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) solution for companies of all sizes - from small businesses to the world's largest enterprises. But salesforce.com delivers more than just a powerful, easy-to-use (CRM) product. We offer a complete platform that empowers every business to experience the benefits of on-demand throughout its entire organization. Our platform includes:
- The Salesforce application, redefining success for customer relationship management (CRM) ranging from sales force automation to marketing to customer service and support.
- The AppExchange, featuring the world's first on-demand application-sharing service - plus a ground-breaking platform for customizing and integrating CRM, as well as developing and deploying brand-new applications.
- Successforce, providing a suite of services and programs that enable customers to take on-demand success to the next level.
Q. How does Salesforce work?
A. The salesforce.com platform represents the foundation for on-demand computing. In the same
way you would log on to your favorite Web site, you can securely connect to Salesforce and manage
detailed information about your sales, service, and marketing activities. Built on a world-class
infrastructure and delivered on the Internet, the components of salesforce.com work together
seamlessly to deliver the core value of on-demand - the ability to manage and share information
easily.
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Q. I'm a sales manager. How can I benefit from using Salesforce?
A. Salesforce is beneficial for everyone from individual salespeople to sales managers and top
executives. Les dirigeants doivent avoir une certaine visibilité des activités de leurs commerciaux
et de leurs en-cours. Salesforce offre de puissantes fonctions de gestion des opportunités, de
prévision, de génération de rapports et de personnalisation qui permet aux responsables de savoir
que leurs équipes sont au maximum de leur productivité. Salesforce makes it easy to train new
employees and make existing employees more productive with easy access to sales best practices. The
powerful, real-time reporting and dashboard tools of Salesforce Analytics make it easy to keep
executive management up to speed without having to manually aggregate data from across the
organization.
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Q. I am an individual salesperson. Can just one person use Salesforce?
A. One person can use Salesforce; however, the solution was designed from the ground up to
empower teams to easily share information with colleagues. Consolidating your customer and sales
information into a single, centrally available system gives everyone a complete view of your
customers, improving everyone's productivity and increasing customer satisfaction.
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Q. I work in a team-selling environment. Can my entire team use Salesforce?
A. A key benefit of Salesforce is its ability to share data real-time and enable all team
members to leverage a common set of information in one easily accessible location. As the owner of
a given account (e.g., Acme Corp.), you have the power to grant fellow team members full access to
ensure everyone can add data, and view each others' public notes, upcoming activities, and
opportunities related to Acme Corp, as appropriate.
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Q. My organization uses resellers to sell our products. Can they access Salesforce, too?
A. Salesforce.com's partner portal toolkit makes it easy for you to create a portal or integrate
Salesforce functionality into an existing Web site to facilitate the exchange of sales and
marketing information with indirect sales channels.
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Q. I'm a customer support manager. How can I benefit from using Salesforce Service & Support?
A. With the multichannel capabilities of Salesforce Service & Support, support managers can successfully deliver a high level of service while keeping costs low. Salesforce provides:
- A comprehensive view of customer information via an easy-to-use agent console
- Automated queuing and routing to promote agent productivity
- Around-the-clock access to product information via a built-in knowledge base that suggests solutions to agents based on similar queries that have been resolved in the past
- Real-time reports and performance metrics
- An audit trail for each case
- Integrated email support
- Workflow, case queuing, escalation, and other capabilities to increase agent productivity
- Instant access to the information agents need to handle inquiries more quickly, increase first-call resolution rates, anticipate the needs of customers, and exceed their expectations
- A Web self-service portal for an efficient and cost-effective way to handle support requests
- Pre-built computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities.
Q. I am a marketing manager. How can I benefit from using Salesforce?
A. With Salesforce Marketing, you can manage multichannel campaigns and provide up-to-date
messaging to sales. Grâce aux puissantes fonctions de gestion des contacts et de gestion des
campagnes, vous pouvez optimiser l'efficacité de l'ensemble de votre marketing mix en ligne et hors
ligne. Utilisez Salesforce pour gérer les pistes, les convertir en opportunités, garantir la
qualité des données, analyser les résultats des campagnes et créer les rapports correspondants.
Mettez rapidement les dernières versions des documents importants à la disposition de vos canaux
grâce aux fonctions de gestion des documents de Salesforce. Utilisez la fonction de gestion des
actifs pour identifier les produits que possèdent vos clients et cibler plus efficacement les
campagnes de ventes croisées. Générez, gérez et créez des rapports sur les pistes et les ventes
dans un système en boucle fermée intégrant ventes et marketing. Réalisez des rapports sur les
résultats des campagnes à l'aide des fonctionnalités sophistiquées d'analyse en temps réel. Aidez
les utilisateurs à créer rapidement leurs propres rapports et tableaux de bord pour obtenir un
aperçu de leur activité. Les utilisateurs obtiennent une vue en temps réel de leur activité grâce
aux tableaux, aux graphiques et aux rapports personnalisables et prêts à l'emploi.
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Q. What platforms do I need to have in order to run Salesforce?
Salesforce.com s'est engagé à libérer les sociétés des logiciels traditionnels, de leurs coûts
cachés, de leurs taux de défaillance élevés, des risques inacceptables qu'ils présentent et de leur
mise en œuvre anormalement longue, tout en leur offrant une plate-forme et une solution de CRM
complète et souple répondant aux besoins des entreprises de toutes tailles, depuis les holdings
d'envergure mondiale jusqu'aux PME du monde entier. As an on-demand service, there is no software
or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade with salesforce.com. This equates to savings of
as much as 90% compared to similar client/server solutions, as you can see in the TCO comparison
chart below. Salesforce.com's subscription pricing includes everything you need, so that unlike CRM
software, you won't be surprised later by hidden people and technology costs that can quickly add
up to as much as ten times the original licensing fees.
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Q. What is Enterprise Edition?
A. Designed for larger or more complex businesses, Enterprise Edition combines the power and
flexibility of a custom-built enterprise software solution with the immediacy and value of
on-demand CRM — deploying rapidly across multiple departments and divisions, seamlessly integrating
with other corporate systems, and encompassing your most complex customer operations. Enterprise
Edition permet de simplifier et de standardiser facilement les opérations de gestion client les
plus complexes à l'aide d'une solution en ligne unique pouvant être déployée rapidement vers
plusieurs services et divisions. Grâce à son support pour services et processus multiples,
l'automatisation du workflow, les prévisions concernant les lignes de produits et la répartition du
chiffre d'affaires, entre autres, Enterprise Edition est conçue pour assurer la prise en charge
souple de toutes ces difficultés qui sont le lot de bon nombre de grandes entreprises. The
Force.com platform — included in Enterprise Edition — empowers even non-programmers to customize
Salesforce by creating custom tabs, renaming existing tabs, and more. De plus, les équipes
informatiques peuvent utiliser les outils standard de l'industrie pour personnaliser et étendre
Salesforce facilement, voire pour élaborer et déployer de nouvelles applications présentant tous
les avantages du modèle à la demande. And with the Force.com API, you can integrate Enterprise
Edition with your existing third-party or homegrown applications.
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Q. What large companies have you already sold?
A. Some of our larger customers include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL),
Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Corporate Express, Dow Jones Newswires, and
SunTrust.
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Q. What is the difference between Enterprise Edition and Professional Edition?
A. Conçue pour les entreprises plus complexes ou de plus grande envergure,
Enterprise Edition offre l'extensibilité dont ont besoin les plus grandes sociétés : un
déploiement rapide à travers plusieurs divisions, une capacité d'intégration transparente avec les
autres systèmes et la prise en charge des opérations les plus complexes. Advanced customization and
administration capabilities meet the needs of companies with complex customer-facing organizations
with multiple sales groups, team selling environments, thousands of users, and/or international
divisions. Enterprise Edition customers can use the Salesforce API to link Salesforce with ERP, HR,
data warehouse, and other business-critical applications.
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Q. Which product is appropriate for my company?
A. It depends on your company's requirements. If you are looking for a turnkey CRM solution and
don't require tight integration with existing applications or advanced customization, then
salesforce.com Professional Edition may meet your needs. Visit our "How to Buy" page for more
details on each of our editions and a comparison chart.
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Q. Can I upgrade from Professional Edition to Enterprise Edition?
A. Oui Salesforce.com Professional Edition customers can easily migrate all of their existing
data and settings to the Enterprise Edition with no effort on their part and minimal work on
salesforce.com's part. Customers may want to work with salesforce.com's Successforce team or with
one of our partners for the business implementation work needed to take advantage of the robust
customization, integration, and administration capabilities included in Enterprise Edition.
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Q. How do I upgrade from Professional Edition to Enterprise Edition?
A. Contact your account executive to complete the necessary agreement, including an annual
subscription agreement. Once salesforce.com is notified of the change, we can upgrade your account
as quickly as within 24 hours.
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Q. Can I migrate from Enterprise Edition to Professional Edition?
A. Non Because Enterprise Edition includes significantly more advanced functionality and
database settings, such as sharing privileges, multiple user interface configurations, user
profiles, and more, there is no way to migrate an Enterprise Edition customer back to Professional
Edition.
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Q. What is Group Edition?
A. Group Edition offre aux équipes de petite taille l'outil idéal pour collaborer facilement et
gérer plus efficacement les relations client. Du fait que tous les utilisateurs peuvent partager
des données client importantes, cette solution s'avère idéale pour les équipes ayant besoin de
fonctions de base d'automatisation des forces de vente, de gestion des comptes et de création de
rapports. Rather than trying to manipulate spreadsheets and email tools to perform as a haphazard
CRM system, Group Edition allows you to more effectively manage critical customer relationships
with real CRM tools including account, contact, and opportunity management, reporting
functionality, and activity and calendar management. This provides management visibility,
eliminates many manual processes, keeps all team members up to date on customer interactions, and
makes teams more productive. Group Edition promises the same easy and rapid deployment, low total
cost of ownership, and fast return on investment that other salesforce.com editions provide. Et
avec la possibilité de mise à niveau transparente vers Professional\~Edition ou Enterprise\~Edition
à mesure que votre entreprise se développe, Team Edition est la parfaite rampe de lancement
vers des solutions de\~CRM complètes.
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Q. What is the difference between Group Edition and Professional Edition?
A. Group Edition is an excellent choice for small teams (of five or fewer) to easily collaborate
and manage customer relationships more effectively, while Professional Edition offers companies of
all sizes a comprehensive CRM suite that business users can customize to manage every aspect of the
customer lifecycle. If you are primarily seeking to organize the customer information in your
contact managers into a single shared system for a small team, then Group Edition may be right for
you. If you require robust sales force automation, marketing automation, and/or customer support,
then Professional Edition may be a more appropriate solution for you. Visit our "How to Buy" page
for more details on each of our editions and a comparison chart.
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Q. What is the difference between Group Edition and ACT! or Outlook?
A. Unlike stand-alone contact managers like ACT! that isolate customer information on individual
desktops, Group Edition provides a common, shared system for customer information. Tous les
commerciaux peuvent consulter, mettre à jour et partager des informations, des activités et des
événements en temps réel à partir de n'importe quel ordinateur, dès l'instant qu'il est connecté à
Internet. Consultez l'historique complet d'un client en un seul clic et suivez de près toutes les
relations avec les clients. Outlook only manages calendar, contacts, and activities, not all
customer information. Outlook also requires a server for sharing. Group Edition provides broader
functionality without requiring you to install any hardware or software on site. Group Edition also
can be upgraded seamlessly to Professional or Enterprise Edition, providing a solution that will
grow with your business.
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Q. Is my data completely secure?
A. Oui Our state-of-the-art security technology ensures that your data is completely safe, which
is why more than 27 100 customers, including some of the world's largest companies, have
trusted us with their customer information. For more detailed information, visit the Web page
highlighting some of the features of our world-class security.
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Q. Exactly what features are available in Group Edition?
A. Group Edition provides shared account, contact, and opportunity management, reporting
functionality, and activity and calendar management. For more detailed information about specific
features available in Group Edition, please refer to our edition comparison chart.
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Q. Can Group Edition work with my Outlook or Palm?
A. Oui Group Edition can seamlessly work with your existing Outlook or Palm contact manager,
calendar, and task list and you can use the provided Intellisync functionality to update
information back and forth between Outlook/Palm and Salesforce.
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Q. What is the price of Group Edition?
A. Group Edition currently is promotionally priced at USD $1200 per year for five users. This price includes not just the user licenses but also the underlying Force.com platform, the application and database servers, database licenses, highly scalable hosting architecture, high data security, front-line support and training, redundant systems, high-speed access, remote backup systems, etc.
Group Edition is bundled with free standard support (value of $1 000), which includes
unlimited cases. Cases can be submitted by Web, email, or phone. Premier Support packages are
available for an extra fee.
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Q. Can I purchase Group Edition on a month-to-month basis?
A. Non Group Edition is available only as an annual, five-user subscription at a price that is
still comparable to that of contact managers.
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Q. What happens if I outgrow Group Edition?
A. If you find that you need more CRM features or customization capabilities than are available
in Group Edition, you may upgrade to Professional or Enterprise Editions at any time. Just contact
your account executive, and we can upgrade you in one business day.
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Q. Can I switch between trials?
A. Salesforce.com currently has separate trials for Group Edition and Professional/Enterprise
Editions. You may upgrade your trial to Professional/Enterprise Edition by contacting
salesforce.com. However, once a customer has been upgraded to Professional or Enterprise Edition,
this integrates core data types and features into the application that cannot be separated out.
Therefore it is impossible to downgrade from Professional or Enterprise Edition to Group Edition.
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Q. What happens to my data if I decide not to purchase after 30 days?
A. If at any time during your 30-day, risk-free trial, you decide that you are not ready to
purchase Group Edition, you may export all of your data into Excel using our reports wizard. We
will purge the data out of our system 30 days after your trial expires.
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Q. How do I purchase Group Edition?
A. You may sign up for our 30-day, risk-free trial and purchase online from within your trial
account. Alternatively, you can call us at 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
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Q. What is the administration included in Enterprise Edition?
A. Enterprise Edition's advanced administration tools enable companies to easily manage even the
largest and most complex rollouts. Enterprise Edition includes an Administration Console that
provides administrators and IT staff with easy-to-use tools for deploying and maintaining thousands
of users, while giving much more granular control over individual users' permissions. These
straightforward tools make the solution more cost-effective to administer than conventional CRM
applications. Among other features, Enterprise Edition allows you to: 1) Tightly control security
permissions and functional privileges. 2) Establish a tiered system administrator hierarchy that
reflects the company organization and culture. 3) Manage usage through rules governing data access
and visibility. 4) Transparently audit all user activities, and 5) Continually monitor resources
using advanced utilization tools.
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Q. What is the administration included in Professional Edition?
A. Salesforce.com Professional Edition includes the key administration and management tools that
IT managers and department administrators need to deploy and maintain a turnkey CRM solution across
sales, service, and marketing departments. This includes: 1) A comprehensive data-sharing model to
support private, read-only, or public sharing. 2) Integrated license management to insure
compliance, and 3) Tracking of storage use and training enrollment at a user level.
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Q. How do I get access to Salesforce?
A. Because Salesforce is an on-demand service delivered over the Internet, there is no hardware
or software to buy, install, or maintain. Just point your browser — Microsoft Internet Explorer
(version 5,5 or higher) or Netscape Navigator (version 6,0 or higher) — to the login page and enter
your username and password.
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Q. Is any training required to learn to use Salesforce?
A. Salesforce is designed to be easy to learn and can be used immediately. Our customers find
that using Salesforce is similar to using other Web sites - extremely intuitive and user friendly.
If you know how to use the Web, you will know how to use salesforce.com.
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Q. Is there training available if I need it?
A. While training is not required, we offer free training for users and administrators, as well
as customized training, for an additional fee. Visit the services section of our Web site to learn
more about our Successforce Education offerings. Customer can access free online training classes
and tutorials by logging into Salesforce and clicking Help and Training.
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Q. What involvement is required from my company's IT department?
A. Because there is no hardware, software, or network equipment to purchase and the application
is accessed through a standard Web browser, your IT department does not need to be involved in
implementing or maintaining Salesforce. However, for more sophisticated implementations requiring
high levels of customization or integration, the Force.com platform does allow developers to build
highly customized, integrated, company-specific CRM systems using the development platforms and
languages of their choice. And IT professionals can leverage AppExchange to create modern,
standards-based enterprise CRM strategies by integrating Salesforce with existing ERP systems,
security systems, email systems, and Web sites.
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Q. How quickly can my company be up and running?
A. With Salesforce, you can be up and running immediately. It typically takes less than 24 hours
to set up and customize your Salesforce solution.
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Q. What is the job of the salesforce.com System Administrator?
A. The administrator is responsible for setting up your Salesforce online application, which
means adding users, establishing their roles, configuring picklists (drop-down menus), and adding
custom fields. This task can frequently be completed in just a few hours, depending on how well
established and defined your business processes are. The administrator may also manage the initial
process of importing your company's existing account and contact data.
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Q. Can my company configure salesforce.com?
A. Your administrator can configure most aspects of Salesforce to meet the specific requirements
of your sales, service, and marketing departments. With the point-and-click Force.com Builder, you
can change the choices in every picklist, add custom workflow, rename tabs and add new ones, add
custom fields, and much more. All pre-configured reports can be customized and saved for future
selection, or you can create new reports and dashboards from scratch to meet your unique
requirements. Additionally, each user can change the "tabs" presented in the user interface. For
example, a marketing manager may choose only to see the Leads, Forecasts, and Reports tabs, while a
sales rep may select Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, and Forecasts.
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Q. Can I add custom fields in Salesforce?
A. Your administrator can quickly add custom fields to standard or custom tabs. Custom fields
can be set up in various formats, such as text, picklist, date, formula, image, or number. Your
custom fields can be included on all appropriately related reports and dashboards.
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Q. How does Salesforce handle territory management?
A. Grâce aux fonctionnalités de gestion des territoires de Salesforce, vous pouvez facilement
définir, administrer, analyser et redessiner les régions de vente en fonction de votre
organisation, quelle que soit sa complexité et son évolution. You can define sales territories with
multiple hierarchical levels and manage the roll up of information across territories based on role
hierarchy and your organization's sharing model. A user's role helps determine the information that
user can see and also determines which data is accessible to him or her in forecasts. As you
organization evolves, you can easily change territories, override territory assignments, and
reassign customers.
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Q. How does Salesforce's enterprise administration and sharing model work?
A. Salesforce's unique and flexible enterprise administration capabilities promote high adoption
rates because users see precisely what's relevant to them - with zero data clutter. Administrators
can easily tailor processes and layouts to meet the specific needs of departments and work groups.
And with Salesforce's secure sharing model - the most advanced in the industry - you can be certain
that only authorized users have access to each discrete piece of data.
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Q. Does an individual user have any control over the sharing of records they own?
A. All account owners are empowered to further extend the sharing on an account-by-account
basis. If the organization has defaulted to a "Private" model, the "ACME" account owner can choose
to increase the visibility for this account to selected groups or to specific individual users. The
same holds true for leads, contacts,oOpportunities, and cases.
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Q. How do I work with Salesforce when I am not connected to the Internet?
A. With Salesforce, you can access your CRM data even when you're on the road. We offer a suite
of mobile CRM solutions to meet every need and situation — whether you want to use your laptop or a
handheld device while traveling. Offline Edition allows you to carry a Salesforce "briefcase" on
your laptop and work offline, via the same easy-to-use Salesforce interface. When reconnected to
the Internet, your changes are updated with unprecedented ease. In addition, salesforce.com also
offers the ability to synchronize your address book and calendar with Microsoft Outlook or your
PDA. And you can save reports in Microsoft Excel for offline viewing and analysis.
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Q. How will my colleagues see my data without me having to synchronize it?
A. With a Public Read-Only or Public Read-Write sharing model, as soon as you save your
information, your colleagues will have access to it. No waiting or synchronization is necessary.
Salesforce.com manages one central database for your organization. Whenever a user adds or edits a
record, this information is automatically captured in the centralized database and available for
others to see immediately (as long as the users have sharing privileges to view such data).
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Q. Can I synchronize with my Palm OS device?
A. You can download specific information directly into your PDA utilizing Palm OS software, or
you can synchronize directly with Microsoft Outlook and then bring the data into your PDA.
Information can be viewed, updated, and then synchronized back with Salesforce.
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Q. Do I need a report writer to create and run reports?
A. All Salesforce solutions include Salesforce Analytics, which allows you to use packaged
reports — or create custom ones — to instantly analyze and report on your on-demand CRM data. From
the reports tab, simply select the report for the data you require. Once a report is displayed you
can easily change the views and parameters and re-run it. Customized reports can be named and saved
for regular re-use.
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Q. Can I get my report information out of Salesforce?
A. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications by selecting
the "Export to Excel" button in the display of every report.
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Q. How do I create custom reports?
A. Advanced functionality is built into the reports to empower you to customize any report. The
reports can then be saved in your customized view, and later accessed for future reference.
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Q. Can I create dashboards for an at-a-glance view of critical metrics?
A. Customizable dashboards from Salesforce provide instant access to the real-time data and
analysis you need to run your business, including benchmarks and critical metrics from sales,
marketing, service, and more. Step-by-step wizards help you pull critical metrics from many
departments into a consolidated view. Les outils de visualisation de données faciles à utiliser
vous permettent d'identifier des tendances à l'aide de graphiques, de tableaux, etc. Définissez
plusieurs tableaux de bord personnalisés de façon à ce que chaque utilisateur obtienne exactement
les informations dont il a besoin pour son rôle et ses responsabilités.
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Q. How do I import my existing data into Salesforce?
A. Salesforce.com provides an import wizard to move your data from Microsoft Outlook, ACT!, or
any program that can save its data in the CSV (comma separated value) file format such as Palm OS,
Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Access. The import wizard takes you step-by-step through the import
process, allowing you to specify how your data will be organized once it is in Salesforce. The
administrator and all users in your organization can use the import wizard to move data into
Salesforce at anytime.
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Q. How often can my organization import data?
A. The import wizard is built into Salesforce and can be used as often as desired.
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Q. How long does it take to import a file?
A. The import wizard includes four steps. The length of time required depends entirely on the
amount of data to be imported, but on average it will take only a few minutes. To expedite the
import process we recommend you review the import directions that are provided in the help section
of Salesforce (which is accessible after you log in to the application). In addition, we recommend
you do your best to match your source file with the default and custom fields available in
Salesforce prior to starting the import wizard.
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Q. Does salesforce.com offer services to help me import my data?
A. Salesforce.com's Successforce Consulting team offers implementation services to help you get
up and running, including data management services. Nous vous aidons à migrer vos données
rapidement et efficacement de sorte que vous puissiez optimiser au plus vite la valeur que dégagent
vos applications Salesforce.
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Security and Scalability Questions
Q. How can I be sure my data is secure?
A. Salesforce.com's security infrastructure, policies, and procedures have been extensively
tested and evaluated both by third-party security experts and our customers' IT organizations — and
among those are some of the world's most security-conscious businesses. We welcome that scrutiny,
because we devote significant resources to maintaining a world-class security infrastructure. For
more details on the security of the Salesforce application, which is trusted by some of the world's
largest companies, visit the Web page highlighting some of the features of our world-class
security. From a user perspective, when you log into Salesforce, you will see a small lock icon at
the bottom of your browser display, indicating that a secure (SSL) connection has been established
to our server. In addition, the URLs used to access your data on salesforce.com are all preceded
with https instead of http, which also indicates that a secure connection is being maintained for
data access from salesforce.com.
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Q. How can I be assured my data will be kept private?
A. Salesforce.com is committed to keeping your sales data private and secure. To this end,
salesforce.com has expressly stated how we will handle your private data. For a greater
understanding of the legal obligations salesforce.com adheres to regarding data privacy, please
refer to the salesforce.com privacy policy as well as the salesforce.com master subscription
agreement.
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Q. Does salesforce.com ever view or use my data?
A. Non As stated in the salesforce.com privacy policy, "Salesforce.com will not review, share,
distribute, print, or reference any such Data except as provided in the salesforce.com Master
Subscription Agreement, or as may be required by law. Individual records may at times be viewed or
accessed only for the purpose of resolving a problem, support issue, or suspected violation of the
Master Subscription Agreement, or as may be required by law. Of course, customers are responsible
for maintaining the confidentiality and security of their user registration and password."
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Q. What happens when the Salesforce database goes down?
A. Salesforce's uptime numbers and average response times rival those of the best in the business - for both business and consumer sites. We know that your business depends on immediate access to the information you need, and we're devoted to ensuring that it's always available, quickly. Salesforce.com has built redundancy into all its systems in order to minimize any system failures that could be perceived as customer outages. All components of the Salesforce system are proactively monitored and managed so that faults are detected before system outages. Salesforce.com realizes there may occasionally be system outages due to issues beyond our control. Salesforce.com has established numerous escalation procedures to notify the proper personnel in the event of any system outage and remedy any issues as quickly as possible. For more details on our system reliability, visit the Web page highlighting some of the features of our world-class security. Back to Top
Q. Can I house a backup of my salesforce.com data at my own company?
A. With Salesforce's database mirroring capabilities, you can integrate your company's complete
set of Salesforce-managed CRM data into an existing data warehouse. Key customer and sales data can
be viewed by advanced reporting tools and in the context of other company information. Using our
special Web services APIs, data can be mirrored on a near real-time basis, so your local data
warehouse is always in sync with your latest Salesforce sales, marketing, and service information.
The database mirroring APIs are available as part of the Force.com platform and are compatible with
almost all platforms and databases. In addition, you can receive a complete download of all your
company data from Salesforce by signing up for our weekly export service. Please contact your
salesforce.com account manager for more information.
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Q. How scalable is Salesforce?
A. Even as salesforce.com's subscriber base has grown rapidly, we've made adjustments to ensure
that our top-quality performance is never compromised. And that goes for your own growth as well.
You can rest assured knowing that salesforce.com has almost limitless scalability and capacity to
take on your additional user and data requirements as your company grows. Some of the world's
largest organizations are salesforce.com customers. Many of them began with small deployments
before adding hundreds or thousands of users as their needs evolved.
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Q. How do I sign up for Salesforce?
A. Most users will sign up online, right on the salesforce.com Web site. The process is
completely safe and secure. Additionally, if you prefer, you can also sign up with us over the
phone. Sales and support representatives are available Monday through Friday 06:00 to 18:00 Pacific
Time at 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
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