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I know similar questions have already asked but I think we need something slightly different:

  • Capturing user info from our website to the CRM directly via an API
  • Sending welcome, followup emails to demo users after their requests, and after the expiration of their demo
  • Other CRM, Leads management stuff
  • A way to either pull stats out of it via API or provide limited accounts to our employers so they can see all our demo, sales, leads stats in real-time
  • Not insanely expensive

Do you think SalesForce can provide this to us? Or do we have to write our own or tweak an open source application to do this.

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2 Answers

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It's a good question; unfortunately the answer is complex.

"Salesforce" is a platform more than anything. Out of the box it doesn't do much; with customization, scripts, and for-pay add-ons, it can literally do anything.

There isn't an open-source tool which will do all this stuff out of the box -- again it takes customization, scripts, etc.. Is it cheaper to have zero-cost tool but write and maintain more code, or pay more money monthly but buy stuff that does most of this now? Either choice is OK -- that depends on your goals.

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I'm a big fan of outsourcing, if the ROI make sense. Obviously if it's too expensive or too much of a lock-in then that's a problem. But as I understand there is no such a service out there anyway. There are some promising ones but definitely missing bits, what I don't want is, rolling out our own system and keep updating and spending our valuable development time to internal issues like this instead of our product. – the dictator Feb 10 '10 at 18:49
up vote 1 down vote 
* Capturing user info from our website to the CRM directly via an API

Yes

  • Sending welcome, followup emails to demo users after their requests, and after the expiration of their demo

Yes, some email follow up; not sure if it covers all your scenarios.

* Other CRM, Leads management stuff

Yes

* A way to either pull stats out of it via API or provide limited accounts to our employers so they can see all our demo, sales, leads stats in real-time

Not sure about API, but can provide access to stats; integrates w/ Google AdWords, too, if I remember correctly.

* Not insanely expensive

I don't remember the cost, but to get some of the features above, you have to buy one of the more expensive account plans.

**FWIW, This info is based on experience that is several years old

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