April 7th 2009: Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) has built an empire by
changing the business model of software; that is, by charging
on-going subscriptions. For the most part, it tends to be more
affordable than the traditional approach, which involves heavy
upfront licensing.
Well, now Salesforce.com is changing things up again. This week,
the company is launching a free mobile product - called Mobile
Lite. As the name implies, this CRM offering doesn't have the
full-blown bells and whistles.
Essentially, Salesforce.com CRM 's Mobile Lite does things like: check on
leads/customer requests, searching, tasks and so on. This is for
the key platforms like Apple Inc's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone,
BlackBerry and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) products.
Interestingly enough, Google Inc's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android is not
on the list (a sign that there probably isn't much adoption of it
yet).
All in all, this is a smart play. Salesforce.com CRM has 1.5 million
subscribers. And, by allowing free mobility, this should increase
engagement even more. Besides, mobile apps are a necessity in the
Corporate world.
Oh, and it will probably be an enticement to get
CRM users to
eventually upgrade to the premium version (about $50 per month),
which should mean another nice bump in revenues for Salesforce.com CRM.
Source: Tom Taulli Link
Related: CRM Marketing
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