1. Salesforce.com – A cloud based CRM system (Team 4)
PROS CONS BOTTOM LINE
Great customization features. Can be expensive based Top of the line online CRM
Strong third-party application on the customization/features system, plus a host of
support. Mature Platform. desired innovative enterprise
Intuitive.features.
Why?
For some organizations, finding enough storage space to hold all the data they've acquired is a real challenge. Some
organizations invest in larger hard drives. Others prefer external storage devices like thumb drives or compact disks.
Desperate computer owners might delete entire folders worth of old files in order to make space for new
information. But some are choosing to rely on a growing trend: cloud storage. There a number of cloud based
solutions present in the market today. But, we need to figure out which one amongst these would be a perfect fit for
a non-profit organization like Interfaith works. This report aims at discussing about one of the cloud-based services
that should be a good fit for Interfaith – Salesforce.com.
In my opinion Salesforce.com is a people’s CRM, anyone with minimum development knowledge can start working
on it. There are five paid Salesforce.com editions, and numerous add-ons. SalesForce is a web-based online on-
demand CRM solutions that provides customer support and a variety of solutions to various groups of professionals
including social enterprises, governments, healthcare institutions, financials companies and much more. It provides
end-to-end solutions and the ability to work across multiple domains. The SalesForce CRM suite is designed to for
different levels of users including those who are new to customer service management and organization- meet
challenges proactively. Salesforce assists businesses to achieve their customer service objective effectively. The
application uses social media to also change the way businesses get to know their customers.

2. Recommendations:
Salesforce is able to provide many features that businesses can use to manage customers. It distinguishes itself by
integrating different areas of CRM and providing a common platform for executing a comprehensive customer
relationship program. Individuals and large enterprises can use a single CRM solution from Salesforce.
Cloud is the new computer architecture. In every major revision of underlying architecture - a few
dominant 'operating systems' emerge. IMHO - I think Salesforce, Google, Amazon and Microsoft seem to
stand the best chance at the moment of building competitive cloud operating systems.
For Interfaith SFDC is probably the most technically endowed of the four.One of the things that makes this
a hard problem is that things that are often relatively simple within a single server (building a load
balancer, a file system) present challenges and opportunities in a massive, geographically dispersed, multi-
tenant environment. Great systems software companies will excel at solving these problems - and the
greater efficiencies that better solutions will enjoy will lead to bigger profits/lower costs. Lesser
companies will quickly fall by the wayside.
Open source has played a big role in PC-architecture operating systems. Anyone could buy a PC, load a
free OS, modify it, use it, and contribute back. That ecosystem will not exist in the cloud. Only a few
companies operating large clouds will have the opportunity to solve some of the fundamental
infrastructural challenges present in these environments.
To continue the analog - operating systems do not 'integrate' all functionality. Offerings that benefit from
low level hardware integration are likely to be subsumed by cloud vendors (highly dense storage arrays
used for building custom cloud storage offerings for example). On the other hand - some areas definitely
need to be portable. Identity/Security for example is a concept that will need to be maintained even when
migrating across clouds. There's a large grey area in the middle. It's not clear why a Cloud vendor must
offer it's own PaaS - or why it has any inherent advantage (aside from distribution ones) over some other
vendor who provides the same. Interfaith can opt for an option from SFDC which is meant for the non-
profits.

3. SFDC for Non-profits:
Through the power of SFDC product discount and donation program, more than 16,000 nonprofit organizations and
higher education institutions are using Salesforce CRM to:
Access data in the cloud from any computer or mobile device
Deepen engagement with constituents with real-time tracking and visibility
Measure and share impact with real-time analytics
Manage programs, operations, and fundraising in one place
Work more collaboratively
Stay on the leading edge of CRM technology with automatic updates from salesforce.com, named
Forbes' Most Innovative Company 2012
Pros of SFDC:
Good for small businesses
Great sales, marketing and reporting capabilities
Overall the solution is fantastic, flexible, fast, customizable, stable, useful, intuitive.
Accessible from any computer
Third party application support like drop box and Google docs
Up and running quickly
Extremely user friendly
Dashboard feature
Intuitive
Data Storage facility
Mature platform
Data Backup facility
Integration with MS Outlook

4. Cons of SFDC:
Expensive, but a good option for non-profits
Serious hidden limitations
Not that great customer service
Email client not that great
Low price editions do not integrate with third party applications
Bottom-line (Why this will work for Interfaith?):
I have worked on a SFDC project during its design phase, in charge of implementing sales force
automation database to the client company Salesforce, so I know a great deal about the program. It is
very easy to use and easy to teach. Salesforce.com offers online classes for employees to learn from.
Originally designed to help companies manage their contacts and sales opportunities, Salesforce has
become a powerful donor-management and fundraising platform for non-profits and NGOs. Thanks to
the Salesforce Foundation, all qualifying non-profits receive 10 free Enterprise licenses—a donation
worth $15,000 a year! We believe that contact-management and fundraising are just the beginning of the
platform’s capabilities. This would be a great opportunity for Interfaith to start an individual platform at a
low cost and establish themselves.
Force.com is a platform available to any organization using Salesforce. Combining powerful database
architecture on the back-end with a user-friendly experience on the front-end, there’s no end to what
you could build on Force.com. And with dynamic, drag-and-drop reporting and dashboard tools built-in,
Interfaith’s data becomes both meaningful and beautiful with just a few clicks.The program is powerful
and intuitive - the web use makes it easy to navigate. The only con is that some of the input fields are
preset and cannot be removed or altered and you can't do a mass mail merge. But, I would recommend
this program to any medium sized company or a non-profit organization looking to increase the
productivity and efficiency.

5. Contributors: (Team 4)
Amit Chaudhari
PrathmeshJadhav
Mohit Desai
SaketKarajagi