1) Gartner names Salesforce Top CRM service provider again
Based on total revenue, market share and revenue growth Salesforce was named the top CRM company in 2014 for the third consecutive year by Gartner, Inc’s latest report “Market Share Analysis:Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2014.” In addition to it Salesforce also gained the most market share in the worldwide marketing software category based on 2014 total software spend.
This keeps Salesforce as one of the fastest growing CRM companies in the world, and it doesn’t seem that they are stopping anytime soon. Salesforce keeps leveraging acquisitions and innovation to continuously grow its offerings and extend its position in the market.
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2015/05/150514.jsp
2) Salesforce recently launched new feature to its Marketing Cloud and Community Cloud
And talking about growth and innovation, Salesforce just launched new Predictive Decisions feature to its Marketing Cloud placing data science in the hands of marketers. It is a new way to connect, engage and proactively deliver recommended content, products or offers, based on highly personalized customers needs . With this new feature, marketers will be able to evaluate data more accurately in order to execute and deliver personalized campaigns, resulting in an experience that will capture and turn casual browsers into buyers. Marketers will also be able to create intelligent programs using integrated cross-channel data with new workflow and automation in order to predict marketing moves. Finally, Predictive Decisions will use new and sophisticated algorithms that will help marketers anticipate what’s the next big thing and automate its delivery to increase conversion rates.
They also launched new tools to their Community Cloud: Targeted Recommendations, Lightning Community Builder and Templates and Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive. The goal of all of communities is to help companies connect with stakeholders in new ways and the new features make the task easier. “Communities have become the connective tissue linking customers, partners and employees to companies and each other,” said Nasi Jazayeri, executive vice president of Community Cloud at Salesforce. He said he expects the new iteration to strengthen those bonds.
CRM strategies are focused around reducing marketing costs, increasing revenues from salespeople and delivering a better customer service. Salesforce is consistently looking for ways to improve their services and keeping up with new technologies. You know the saying “If you snooze you lose”; all of these new features become the perfect way for companies to concentrate marketing efforts by automatically deliver relevant insights to end-users, managers and businesses in general. No wonders they call themselves “The Customer Success Platform”
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2015/03/150305-2.jsp
3) Reasons why Microsoft said no to Salesforce counter offer
We all know Microsoft and Salesforce were talking about a possible buyout; Microsoft was willing to offer about $55 billion for the worlds’ top CRM service provider but Salesforce founder and Chief Executive Marc Benioff was expecting something around the $70 billion, “Indeed, Microsoft and the San Francisco tech giant had advanced negotiations, but the talks broke down” CNBC reported, Microsoft and Salesforce declined to comment on the report. Besides the high asking price, Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, was somewhat reluctant to pull the trigger on a deal of such size, as said by CNBC citing people familiar with the matter.
Microsoft did not make any further offers which indicates that the negotiations have ended. Analysts say that if the deal was done it would have been one of the largest acquisitions for Microsoft (and certainly one of the largest tech acquisitions in history).
4) Salesforce Summer 15 Guide
Summer’s here and so is the Summer 15 Guide that Salesforce released on May 21st promising more than 225 new and improve features to look forward to. The new features will help companies gain powerful insights about their business and then instantly take actions. Some of these releases are going to include new technology into the Salesforce platform, such as an Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch where you could access the most relevant and timely business data instantly on the move.
We recommend you to take a look at the Summer 15 Admin Quick Wins Guide, this is a new guide that Salesforce launched to help users understand and access relevant information they will be needing to implement the Summer 15 Guide. This guide highlights 7 features that are quick and easy to turn on and it also provides direct links to release notes. Some of these features are:
- Custom recommendation for the Community Cloud: Highlight and recommend content to community members.
- Salesforce App for Outlook: View Salesforce records in your email and create new records directly in Salesforce for Outlook (for community users).
- Data Loader for Mac: Easily import, export and upload Salesforce data on Macs.
5) App of the week
Panopto is a new App that offers a way to bring video to the communication hub.
While Salesforce facilitates data quality, information sharing, sales, email prospective and customer relationship tasks in general, it is extremely difficult to do all of these through video (an extremely important communication and marketing tool). That’s where Panopto Salesforce App steps in offering numerous functionalities such as:
- Add video attachments and playlists to Salesforce accounts and sales opportunities
- Create reports on who has watched the video
- Upload and share videos of any size from within Chatter
Within other features… If you want to learn more go to the Salesforce Appexchange web-page or Contact us for more information by clicking here