Salesforce.com meets Clint Eastwood

I promised a report on my SFdotCOM experience, Clint Eastwood style (the good, the bad and the ugly) so here it goes.

The setting: I recently set out to buy and do an initial setup of SFdotCOM for a soon to be funded start-up. This was an interesting process to say the least and I definitely went at it with an eye for lessons learned and a few surprises along the way. For example, did you know that while Mr. Benioff's NO SOFTWARE badge is true, you can't actually buy SFdotCOM online...you must talk to their sales force to complete a purchase.

So, with appropriate background music playing, here goes:

The Good: SFdotCOM's sales force is excellent - at least the two people I dealt with whom I'll simple refer to as Tammy and Jenn. Professional, responsive, knowledgeable and another dozen adjective that I wont bore you with are all 100% true. They know their craft, got me the right information, closed me successfully and left me feeling great about the process. I was left believing that their people may be their greatest corporate asset. SaaS is service and they clearly get this.

The Bad: SFdotCOM is now a big, enterprise software company. The product is big, the options are big, the license agreement is big (and you do need to read it - your giving these guys your customer data). Ok - its SaaS but its no longer small and simple. Some of this is a function of scale and some a function of breadth but they could do better here.

Inside "the bad" and over the weeks that followed the purchase, Iv'e come to conclude that while complex and comprehensive, SFdotCom is also implementable and customizable for a small implementation like ours by mere morals like me! This experience has turned what was at first a "bad" into a "good" and I'm even more impressed by their product. Non programmer can easilly modify the product, create validations, add new views and generally customize the product.

The Ugly: Once you're done with nearly everything, they send you an electronic quote and for the ultra low end edition I was buying, you go through FORCE.COM checkout. This took fully two hours. The February month end checkout lines was longer than anything I've encountered on Christmas eve at Macy's. This needs to be improved.

Ok - so the Clint Eastwood format has left us with two negatives and only one positive. My impression of SFdomCOM from this experience is far, far better than this. Its clear these guys have what it takes to lead this market for a long long time - great people, great process and great products is a winning combination. They face big competition down the road but if they stay true to their roots...SaaS is service, simple is better, no software, they should continue to gain ground for many, many years to come.