To steer your company through these turbulent times, it's more important than ever to be on top of every lead, every opportunity, and every customer interaction. Without a big up-front software investment that's expensive to install and maintain. That’s where CRM software as a service comes in.

With CRM software as a service from salesforce.com, you can get up and running in 30 days. With our pay-as-you-go model, the price of success is dramatically lower. And say goodbye to complexity, too: Salesforce.com handles the heavy lifting of maintenance and upgrades. No wonder CRM software as a service has become so popular.

CRM Solutions for Better Customer Relationships

CRM solutions help companies do what they need to thrive: focus on customer relationships. In fact, business CRM software as a service helps make that focus laser sharp. For the most successful companies, CRM solutions are an area of continual innovation and assessment. And your CRM processes and technologies must keep pace with—or ideally stay ahead of—changes in your market and customer base. With their inherent flexibility, lower costs, and faster implementations, cloud computing CRM solutions, also known as CRM software as a service, have become the de facto standard for companies of all sizes in all industries and geographies.

Organizations can enjoy unparalleled productivity, revenue growth, and business intelligence with Salesforce CRM software as a service:

• Sales. CRM software-as-a-service solutions enable companies to drive sales productivity, increase visibility, and expand revenues.
• Customer Service and Support. CRM solutions get companies up and running in a matter of weeks with a call center application that is loved by agents and a customer self-service application that generates new levels of customer loyalty.
• Partner Relationship Management. CRM software as a service makes it easy for partners to access leads, collaborate on deals, and locate all the information they need to be successful. And companies finally get a single view into the sales pipeline for both direct and indirect channels.
• Marketing. CRM software as a service enables closed-loop marketing to execute, manage, and analyze the results of multichannel campaigns. Marketing executives can measure the ROI of their budgets, tie revenue back to specific marketing programs, and make adjustments in real time.
• Content. CRM software as a service brings Web 2.0 usability to your business content so you can share it more effectively and enhance collaboration. Empower employees to find the exact documents they need, right from the CRM software as a service application they use every day.
• Ideas. Salesforce.com’s CRM solutions make it easy to unleash the power of community and create a dynamic dialogue with your customers, partners, and employees. In your online community, members can post, discuss and vote on ideas. The best ideas bubble up to the top, helping you prioritize and manage feedback in a scalable manner.
• Analytics. CRM software as a service empowers business CRM users at every level to gain relevant insight and analysis. With real-time reporting, calculations, and dashboards, businesses can optimize performance, decision making, and resource allocation.
• Custom Applications. Once companies get a taste of cloud computing CRM solutions, they usually want to branch out beyond CRM software as a service into other areas of the business. With the Force.com platform, you can build and deliver CRM software as a service plus all your company's business applications in a single environment with one data model, one sharing model, and one user interface.
• Industry Applications. Meet all of your industry-specific needs with salesforce.com's award-winning CRM software as a service, a broad variety of apps from the AppExchange, and the Force.com platform. Industry CRM solutions are built on the successes of hundreds of companies and are fully and easily customizable.

Business CRM

For business, CRM can make the different between thriving and going under. That’s because the quality of the customer experience makes and breaks companies. Companies are challenged to integrate and manage the complete customer lifecycle to win and retain those highly desirable most-profitable customers. For many companies, the underlying, proven formula for success involves using business CRM software as a service across all those critical customer touch points.

Too often, sales, operations, marketing, customer service, help desk support, professional services, and other customer-facing departments use disparate systems because there is no business CRM system of record for the whole company. As a result, no one has a complete picture of the customer. CRM software as a service, in comparison, unifies customer information and activities so every department has a 360-degree view and can provide quicker, better service:

• Leads go directly to the right sales team or individual rep (routed automatically by the CRM software as a service solution), are well qualified, and include the correct information.
• Marketing gets real-time visibility via CRM software as a service into the status of every lead, sees which lead sources drive the most revenue, and plans appropriate marketing campaigns.
• Service and support organizations get visibility into which products or services the customer is using and any pending sales opportunities, and can alert the sales team to potential cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, all via a single business CRM application.
• Back in sales, a quick check of the CRM software as a service application gives reps insight into any outstanding customer service issues so there are no unpleasant surprises when they make sales calls.

With a shared CRM software as a service solution, each department can be more effective and productive in every customer interaction, and each employee can provide superior, consistent service.

Meanwhile, businesses must “mind their metrics” to stay competitive. With traditional enterprise software, getting tailored reports usually requires IT involvement and days or weeks of waiting. With CRM software as a service, business intelligence is democratized. Executives and managers finally have instant visibility into all aspects of the business—everything from a bird’s-eye view to the micro-level details. Running reports and setting up real-time dashboards using CRM software as a service requires just a few clicks. No more consolidating disparate spreadsheets and working with data that’s days or weeks old. Executives in every department can use business CRM solutions get the total customer insight they need to build a stronger, more profitable business:

• CRM software as a service gives sales managers and executives a better overview of customer information and sales activities. Business CRM also provides instant access to accurate pipeline information and forecasts.
• Marketing executives can use CRM solutions to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and tie revenue back to individual marketing activities. Finally, marketing ROI is measurable, thanks to business CRM software as a service.
• Customer service executives use CRM software as a service to access to up-to-the minute information about global service operations—such as agent performance and service quality—so they can make adjustments that will have a positive impact, quickly.

Even small investments in dashboards and reporting for all your customer-facing employees using CRM software as a service can have a profound impact on business performance.