Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

I had the opportunity to attend the Salesforce.com, Cloudforce event last week.  Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff was in tune as usual with all the energy of a first-grader after a second bowl of Count Chocula.  And while Mark’s keynote carried the standard theme’s;  Software as a Service,  10th anniversary,  and metrics of customer success with Salesforce:

• 52% increase in leads
• 34% boost in revenues
• 23% decrease in service and support costs
• 30% improvement in customer retention
• 80% reduction in application development effort

What was most interesting was the change in the tone of the attendees.  Fast forward six months from Dreamforce when cloud computing was defiantly a known entity but not a fait accompli for most visitors to today where it was a matter of fact: Customers, attendees and the press talked as if every application was running in the cloud and organizations no longer bothered with buying servers, software installs and service contracts. 

Granted the Cloudforce events are a microcosm, but unlike many technologies that take years to gestate and then even longer to move to emotional acceptance, the vision of centralized computing is back in vogue…. And for good reason.  As Kraig Swensrud, Salesforce’s senior director of product marketing put it “The vision of the company from Day 1 has been that it should be as easy to use a business application as it is easy to buy a book on Amazon.com”

Walking away from a week at Moscone Center with the theme of “Cloud Computing” firmly planted in my subconscience, what struck me as truly inspirational was the enthusiasm salesforce.com customers had for the future of their businesses. Not to diminish Benioff’s keynote, but the real story was the attendees and how many were planning to use new tools to cope with tougher economic times and fewer resources vs. just retrenching and weathering the storm.

Given the audience, I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise with over 60% of SMBs attributing “lower expense rates” and “increases in productivity” as the driving factors for embracing Software-as-a-Service.  Automating and working smarter is a company’s best defense.

Ultimately, the many conversations I had with attendees highlighted three key points that were top-of-mind:

• Companies are trying to do more with less
  Across the board, we are all under pressure to increase sales despite fewer resources.
• Sales and Marketing Automation is a priority
  Generating more qualified leads is a top priority, and providing information to sales in real-time is a must have.
• Turning economic challenges into an opportunity is high on the list
  The changing economic climate is altering company strategies to focus on sales effectiveness.

It was clear that companies attending the event were thinking ahead. And given the predisposition Saleforce.com users have to embracing solutions based on SaaS and Cloud Computing to automate their businesses, it’s my bet they will fare far better than most.