ROI for IT

Realizing the Value of On-Demand

Salesforce.com is committed to freeing companies from traditional software and its hidden costs, high failure rates, unacceptable risks, and protracted implementations. All while providing a comprehensive, flexible platform and CRM solution that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes, from the world's largest enterprises to small and mid-sized companies everywhere.

Unparalleled Time to Value

Salesforce.com minimizes the risk involved in implementing business applications like CRM by eliminating the need for up-front capital investment, making the path to CRM success exceptionally short. Salesforce implementations usually take less than a month and rarely exceed three months, compared to 12 months or longer with client/server software. According to a recent study by Triple Tree and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), on-demand deployments are 50 to 90 percent faster, with a total cost of ownership five to ten times less than for installed software.

Eliminate Hidden Costs

As an on-demand service, there is no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade with salesforce.com. A fully-loaded, five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) study for a 50-seat project considered a range of often hidden cost factors, ranging from needs analyses to internal downtime. This study showed the TCO of an on-premise solution to be 2.5 times more costly than that of an on-demand solution.

Focus on Your Business, Not on Technology Infrastructure

CRM should solve your business problems, not create more headaches. With salesforce.com, you'll be free to focus on solving strategic problems instead of worrying about infrastructure requirements, maintenance, and upgrades.

The on-demand model also promises significant savings in administrative costs—more than 50 percent in comparison to client/server CRM software. The areas in which on-demand saves administrative costs include:

  • Basic customization. Point-and-click tools empower administrators and business users to perform basic customizations themselves.
  • Real-time reporting. Easy wizards walk users through report and dashboard creation, keeping IT’s queue free of report requests.
  • Security and sharing models. A built-in sharing model protects sensitive data while reducing the amount of time required managing security profiles.
  • Multiple languages and currencies. Included support for 13 languages and all currencies make managing a global application easier.
  • Other administrative functions. Tasks that are cumbersome and time-consuming in other CRM applications—such as  territory management and sales forecasting—are made simple in Salesforce.

TCO Comparison Chart: Salesforce.com vs. CRM Software

While the table below gives total cost of ownership comparisons based on several common user population sizes, Salesforce Enterprise Edition and Salesforce Professional Edition licenses are available in any increment you need — from one user to 100,000 (or even more).

Total Cost of Ownership Conventional CRM Professional Edition Enterprise Edition
Number of Users 150 150 150
Application License & Subscription $300,000.00 $117,000.00 $225,000.00
Support/Upgrade Costs $54,000.00 $0.00 $0.00
Implementation & Customization $900,000.00 $29,250.00 ¹ $56,250.00
IT Infrastructure/Hosting Costs $125,000.00 $0.00 $0.00
IT Personnel Support $150,000.00 $0.00 $0.00
Training Costs (Admin & End Users) $45,000.00 $11,700.00 $22,500.00
Totals ($)
 $1,574,000.00 $157,950.00 $303,750.00
Costs (%)
 100% 10% 19%

Source: Yankee Group ¹ Cost of implementation service will vary.