As long as the history of Salesforce.com is , so is the list of its failures. This blog highlights the 3 major gotchas in Salesforce operation over the past decade which the ex-users had to deal with, current-users need to be aware of and the future victims need to be cautioned against.
1. VMforce!
VMforce is a classic example of start with a bang , end with a lull. The publicity of the so-called "Strategic" alliance between VMware and Salesforce.com, which till today appears on the Google's SEO, is Dead! As the Gartner maxim rightly points "The only real partnerships are acquisitions", depending on enterprises and developers whose platforms are a collections of 'strategic alliances' is surely a risky business. Even if they come up with timely replacements, your important data will still be a refugee with some new server, till even this alliance is broken!
2. System Failure
Though regular technical hitches are common with any system, the backup always comes to the rescue. But what if your entire system along with the back-up fails! This is what precisely happened with Salesforce on 4th of January 2010, wherein all the then-existing 68,000 clients experienced a downtime of more than 1 hour. "Tier-storage failure" as termed by the website or a New-year hangover, Salesforce.com can't deny this to be one of the worst failures in the SaaS history.
3. CRM= Customer Relationship Management!
It is an irony that an enterprise which sells CRM solutions, itself cannot maintain relations with its own customers. Too-aggressive marketing, arrogant responses and an obnoxious company culture have being the highlights of Salesforce, no wonder the name itself personifies 'compulsion'. Don't take my word on this, industry experts like Bob Thompson & Dick Lee have similar views. Do have a look through the following links to verify.
http://www.customerthink.com/article/five_problems_will_thwart_salesforce
http://h-ym.com/blog/2008/03/24/its-salesforcecom-thank-you-very-much/
http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/1378151/Salesforcecom-suffers-service-outage-after-operations-failure
So the next time you try to force your sales, do consider the hint given in the name "Sales F.O.R.C.E"!
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