Basics of Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the first on-demand Cloud Computing customer relationship management (CRM) software. 

Salesforce.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company that distributes business software on a subscription basis (pay as you go model). 

Salesforce hosts the applications offsite. It is best known for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products.

Below are the terminologies you should be familiar before dive into details of Salesforce.com. Because these are Basics of Salesforce.com as a CRM and the platform at which Salesforce.com runs (Force.com).


What is ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning, a business management system that integrates all facets of the business, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing.

What is CRM?

C-R-M stands for Customer Relationship ManagementA business strategy for developing and improving relations between companies and their customers.

In simple, a CRM system allows businesses to manage business relationships and the data and information associated with them. With CRM, you can store customer and prospect contact information, accounts, leads and sales opportunities in one central location, ideally in the cloud so the information is accessible by many, in real time.

Customer relationship management (CRM) applications help you take care of your current and future customers. With CRM, your sales, marketing, and customer service teams’ interactions with customers are all managed in one place. You’ll make better business decisions because you always have accurate and up-to-date customer information.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions allow you to manage the relationships you have with your customers, using a combination of people, processes and technology. It helps your business attain and retain happy customers.

Today, CRM is shifting toward cloud computing. Instead of buying and maintaining expensive servers and software to manage customer conversations and information, companies can use Web-based (“cloud”) CRM applications—and get a high return on their investments.

CRM apps need to be easy to use for sales, marketing, and service professionals in any industry.


What is SFA (Sales Force Automation)?

SFA stands for Sales-force Automation. SFA is a technique of using software to automate the business tasks of sales, including order processing, contact management, information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation.

SFA is often used interchangeably with CRM; however, CRM does not necessarily imply automation of sales tasks.

AppExchange Apps

Salesforce.com has an entire infrastructure designed to support the distribution of applications to customers, including the collection of license fees, as well as License Management technology to manage and monitor the use of applications distributed as managed packages.

AppExchange is the name for the overall program for the promotion and sales of Force Platform-based applications. With AppExchange, you can list your application on the Salesforce.com web site, as well as offer trial versions of your products and collateral on the applications.

What is Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

The process of managing an application's lifecycle, from planning, to
development, to integration and support. Application lifecycle management
is often depicted as a circle, because the cycle repeats itself as the
application evolves.


What is License Management Application (LMA)

An LMA free AppExchange app that allows you to track sales leads and accounts
for every user who downloads a managed package of yours from
AppExchange.


What is License Management Organisation (LMO)

The Salesforce.com organisation that you use to track all the
Salesforce.com users who install your package. A license management
organisation must have the License Management Application (LMA)
installed. It automatically receives notification every time your package is
installed or uninstalled so that you can easily notify users of upgrades.You
can specify any Enterprise, Unlimited, or Developer Edition organisation
as your license management organisation. For more information.