“it’s hard to imagine how declining prices in the IT world will allow them to maintain such a big price premium for CRM when compared with Google Apps.”

Salesforce responded with the Group pricing for $25 a month and Google integration.  This is not good news for Solve306. As Salesforce is forced to leave its silo and adjust its pricing, it is actually taking over the space it had left until now to Solve360 and the like—if Salesforce can still be profitable.

Price point and Google integration is no longer a market differentiator. This should sound that alarm bell. Unless you do something more, you take the risk to be crunched between two 1,000 pounds gorillas.

Solve360 differentiator is its project blog paradigm—seamless integration between sales and project delivery. This is a key feature for small to medium size businesses—Salesforce just add another clumsy service to integrate in their ecosystem—and more integration headache; this is no help.

SMB needs a client management and project delivery hub they can complement with a few highly specialized app (email marketing/survey, accounting, scheduling, doc management) and their communication hub, either Google or Mac.

API development and integration with third party applications (email marketing, conferencing, communication, billing and invoicing, accounting, CPM scheduling) should be a priority. Otherwise, you might dilute your focus from your core features—the main issue with WORKetc.

A more detailed and scaled monthly price menu would also be a key differentiator. SMB needs can vary greatly from months to months. It is reassuring to know that your hub will support you when you’re overextended and need extra storage space for this limited project, and yet not burden you when you hit a hole the next month.

And there is the untapped Mac ecosystem and the iPad bandwagon. Daylite, Elements, are not web-based. There is a huge window of opportunity there (ok, I am bias).

Hope that helps.

Best regards,
Charles

Salesforce tends to market and sell to everyone (who could criticize them for asking for money).  From a practical view they’ve essentially giving the SME segment lip service and followed the cash into the enterprise space (larger $ deals) to sustain their insane marketing and sales expense.  They constantly try to dress down their enterprise products and call it their made for SME solution.  Look closely at these offerings and you often find they are loss leaders into more expensive products.  I’ve never heard of a company using Salesforce say it was inexpensive—somehow they find a way to squeeze money out of you—clever for them.

Small teams have completely different requirements and expectations— in the tech business you can rarely go downmarket, you must start with something small, useful and grow it in within a specific market.

My anecdotal example—clients are loading data from Salesforce to Solve, but I’ve not yet heard of a client moving from Solve to Salesforce.  Perhaps that’s more of a reflection of new product specialization—creating value for smaller service focused teams with an agile product, rather than the traditional CRM focus of automating high volume transactions and supervising sales teams with a highly structured product.  I’ll leave the rest of the David and Goliath context to Zoho to map out

Who wins?  Businesses and solution providers at large

Who loses?  Large company sales and marketing staff.

IT is getting leaner / gaining scale, and folks are starting to understand there’s more to their computer than writing spreadsheets and updating virus software.  The next few years look exciting.

Steve Ireland - May 01, 2010 09:56am

Look closely at these offerings and you often find they are loss leaders into more expensive products…

Small teams have completely different requirements and expectations— in the tech business you can rarely go downmarket, you must start with something small, useful and grow it in within a specific market.

You summarized the main reason for my interest in Solve360. We are migrating towards communication hubs that bring order to our fragmented digital life and efficiency to our professional endeavors.

I completely agree with you. I do not need yet another layer of fragmentation and customization, and my project management needs are more pressing than sales and marketing (I am not selling thousands of products across multiple geographic markets and channels—service delivery follows a much simpler model).

Good luck!
Charles