Salesforce.com and Deloitte Consulting Ally

January 30, 2007 from Destination CRM – “Salesforce.com is pairing with Deloitte Consulting in a strategic alliance that may enhance the on-demand CRM giant's ability to further penetrate into larger organizations. As part of the alliance, revealed on Tuesday, Deloitte will incorporate Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM apps and the Apex on-demand platform into its consulting services.

Salesforce.com's alliance with Deloitte will help give enterprises the confidence they need to develop, customize, integrate, and deploy on-demand applications with consultants that can help them address their global requirements, according to Bobby Napiltonia, senior vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at Salesforce.com. "The largest enterprise businesses worldwide are realizing they too can take part in on-demand success," he said in a written statement. "With Salesforce Winter '07 and the Apex on-demand platform, companies are able to extend the benefits of on-demand applications to any part of the enterprise."

"Salesforce.com's on-demand model can help change the way large organizations approach their customers," said Paul Clemmons, Deloitte Consulting principal and emerging solutions leader, in a written statement. "We look forward to working even more closely with Salesforce.com to help our clients in their efforts to realize significant results from their on demand applications. The Salesforce.com Apex on-demand platform represents an opportunity to expand the benefits of on-demand computing across many facets of an enterprise."

The announcement dovetails with the findings of a study unveiled today by Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm, a search resource for tech solutions and information. More than half of the 198 organizations surveyed use on-demand solutions, and nearly two-thirds plan on implementing an on-demand offering in the next year, according to the study. "This survey shows that the on-demand model is beginning to outgrow its image as a small business solution that, while cost-effective, couldn't scale reliably," Jeff Ramminger, executive vice president of KnowledgeStorm, said in a written statement. "Now, companies of all sizes can take advantage of the efficiencies of these types of solutions."

Salesforce.com has been trying to move up-market for a while, says Timothy Hickernell, associate senior analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. "At some point in this process, software vendors do need to have credible system integration partnerships to get their foot in the door of large firms. The key will be to see how many resources Deloitte--and other SIs--ultimately put towards this partnership, such as full-time consultants trained and certified on Salesforce.com's technology."

180 View – This article is interesting partly because of the statistics supporting the on demand model as well as Deloitte’s commitment to it. Another view is about lack of independence. Deloitte has other strategic relationships including with Cognos, Lawson, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Our perspective is that Deloitte (and the other firms like it that offer implementation services with specific systems) will be unable to provide independent consulting advice in business process improvement projects that potentially involve either replacement or upgrades.

Salesforce.com bites bullet on need for more integration

July 24, 2006 from ComputerWorld - "Salesforce.com Inc. last week rolled out the latest version of its hosted software with added features that include a built-in link to SAP AG's ERP applications. The move is part of an effort by the customer relationship management vendor to address integration shortcomings cited by current and former users.

Several IT managers and corporate executives said that despite its continued momentum in the CRM market, Salesforce.com still faces the inherent limitation of selling a best-of-breed offering that doesn't easily connect with other business applications…

There will always be a debate over whether it's better to standardize on a single application platform or use best-of-breed systems, he noted. But he said that he's willing to accept the inherent problems of the latter approach. By using Salesforce.com's software, Kramer added, "we don't sacrifice on the technology that manages our biggest asset: our customer relationships."

In some cases, though, the lack of widespread integration offerings and the cost of running separate CRM and back-office systems have led users to defect from Salesforce.com.

"If I were to say one single reason for our change, it was that we needed tight integration," said Flora Sun, chief operating officer at Adina for Life Inc. in San Francisco. "We needed fully functional end-to-end processes."

180 View - "End-to-end processes" is today's mantra of the ERP systems, and it includes processes embedded in CRM. If Salesforce.com is to continue its leadership role in CRM, we think it will need to develop hooks to many other ERP systems.