Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. In it, he explains why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social.
I quit my job at Oracle in 1999 because I couldn’t stop thinking about a simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?” Why couldn’t applications be run from a simple website, without software or hardware to install, and pricy consultants to hire? Why couldn’t we just compute in the Internet, or the cloud, and get away from the data center and all its complexity. Simply put, I wanted to simplify the enterprise. It was a pretty straight-forward idea, but from the confines in which I sat, there wasn’t anything close to a straight-forward solution.
That vision led to the founding of salesforce.com. But the enterprise world wasn’t ready for Amazon.com, or eBay, or Yahoo, or any of the innovative services that were changing the way consumers bought, sold, or communicated. I tell this story in my book Behind the Cloud and can’t help but note that the factors at play 10 years ago—an inspiring service, wide skepticism, and phenomenal potential—mirror where we are today. But it’s no longer Amazon that frames the questions or gives us the answers.
In this decade, I’ve become obsessed with a new simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” As we were focused on bringing enterprise computing into the modern age, Facebook redefined the values of consumer computing and helped ignite the social phenomenon. The compelling aspect of feeds, profiles, and groups, amplify the service’s stickiness. So does its functionality on a mobile device like an iphone—necessary to secure a service’s status as a “killer app.” Facebook is where I start my day to find out what my friends and family are doing. It’s where I go to see the important events in my social life. Everything I care about and need to know is pushed to me—and it requires no work on my part.
What does the social revolution mean for business, though? So far it hasn’t meant much. Currently, our methods of collaboration are defined by Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint, but these tools haven’t kept up with the changing times. They were conceived before anyone knew what a “newsfeed” was. (In fact, Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg was!) Today, realtime information is possible, which has changed everything: How people consume information has changed, how people learn things about each other has changed, and how people stay current has changed. Most of all, our expectations around immediacy have changed.
Now, we need to take this idea to our businesses. We need to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, deals are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time. Yet the software we use to run our enterprises is in anything but real time. We need tools that work smarter, make better use of new technology (like the mobile devices in everyone’s hands), and fully leverage the opportunities of the Internet.
New realtime cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure offer the path to redefine the future of collaboration. Now in beta, Salesforce Chatter takes the best of Facebook, Twitter, and other social leaders, for instance, and applies it to enterprise collaboration—making people more productive and businesses more competitive. I already see it working: I have an enterprise desktop where without any effort I can learn about what my team is focusing on, how my projects are progressing, and what deals are closing. It is fundamentally changing the way our organization collaborates on product development, customer acquisition, and content creation—making it all easier than ever before.
We are on the precipice of a major shift in our industry. It stems from a change we badly needed and the once-in-a-decade question we had to ask. And this time, we are all ready for the answers. Luckily, this time, I don’t have to leave my job to find out what they are.
Doesn’t Yammer already do something pretty similar to this? How integrated will Chatter be with the rest of your products and will it be focused on your core sales customers?
Yohanes,
Yammer doesn’t even do anything close to what Salesforce chatter is doing. Salesforce chatter is quite powerful because it connects business applications & process to the feed format. Yammer is a walled garden like most current enterprise microblogging services.
It is for this reason why Socialwok when we started wanted to tied in with existing workflows of businesses like email, Google Docs, etc. This distinction is quite important.
Ming
Yup. I agree 100% w/ Ming here. Collaboration that isn’t integrated into the CRM/Service/Enterprise system you spend ALL your time in is just a separate, isolated island.
Its completely different. If SFDC can truly execute on this vision, it’ll transform the value provided by its enterprise software.
Its about being able to have better awareness about the things that are happening around you inside the company/application as you go about your daily work.
If they can’t execute….well thats a wrap.
I concur with what the writer of this post is pointing out, that in the future, cloud computing will be part of our lives.. It may held some problems and security issues but it’ll increase the productivity of the whole internet class in terms of business and sales.
And that’s why google is starting to do it today, on their future agendas.
Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?
Why is all enterprise software like Amazon.com?
Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?
Why is all enterprise software like Facebook?
http://www.udtek.com/laptop-ac-adapter-c-2.html
I unfortunately do not subscribe to this simply because some “things” were meant to stay a certain way. Enterprise should NOT be social just because it COULD be social. As it is, there’s a lot of underbelly socialness happening as a result of partners, competitors, affiliates, colleagues, ex-colleagues swirling around Facebook and it makes for a pretty incestuous environment.
Trying to flip enterprise on its head and make it social would do nothing but create a sloppiness that could never work. Moving to the web from monolithic software is one thing – moving to a overtly social environment to conduct enterprise “activities” is another.
I agree with you at some point! I work developing social media solutions for enterprises, but we have one thing very clear: Enterprises are all different, social solutions have to be designed for each one specially, there is no magic ‘formula’ that can make a development work for every company the same way. And sometimes, for some companies, social solutions just wont work. With that in mind, you have to analize each company and try to design the best solution. Even if it doesn’t include your services. :S
The problem is that in some companies, large consulting groups who have been clients for example, people are scattered around the world. Part of the job is figuring out who is who, and how projects get completed.
The days of walking down the hall are over for more advanced organizations. That does not mean that something like this will work or fit. Time will tell. Not al groups have to be social to accomplish an agenda. But, Salesforce is also established in a market that requires high rates of socialization.
The premise that Marc spoken about regarding why enterprise social could not be more social like facebook is exactly the reason why I started my company Socialwok -a business social networking service for Google Apps. Our users use Google Apps account to login into Socialwok, share messages, files and existing Google Docs/Calendar from Gmail. (http://socialwok.com/tour_gapps)
I believe Salesforce chatter is quite disruptive – connecting business applications + social feeds as it brings together salesforce trapped data and connects that to a social process. There are also other interesting platforms where business data is trapped like Google Apps.
Google Buzz also brings an interesting dimension. At Socialwok, we are vey excited about Buzz. It extends Socialwok’s capabilities even more. Big announcements coming from us on feed based sharing on the enterprise + buzz :-) Keep updated from our blog http://blog.socialwok.com
Ming
Disclosure: I am CEO of Socialwok (http://socialwok.com/tour), Business Social Networking for Google Apps. We provide to businesses in general in particular Google Apps users the ability to do microblogging, collaboration using feeds.
look at the chinese shamelessly plugging his startup. dude, once is enough
That’s his job! Relax… He was complementary of Salesforce’s effort further up stream, so he is not being a shill.
That said, have you heard about how we are trying to make education social?
Agreed, sk. Ming Yong what the hell do you have to say for yourself?
Well I think he’s just being social. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here? Just pretend you’re on FaceBook/Twitter/SFChatter/Buzz.
Now do you get it?
im tired of reading about the “social revolution.” its so annoying. there is no revolution, just people killing more time on facebook chatting about jersey shore. no revolution
No surprise the MS guy doesn’t get what 300M people do almost everyday…
If it ain’t Windows …
What is interesting is that he is correct in the sense that we are still groping, trying to find efficient ways to be social in such contexts. How do I not blow half a day like yesterday! Part of the efficiency lies in the fact that it takes less time to work collaboratively.
But, my guitar teacher very simply had me look in the mirror as I played, and he said, “I don’t even have to be here. You just solved all of he problems.” Insight like that takes another person with different experiences, even if I may solve the problem myself.
We have to find out if the 300 million are lemmings or explorers.
“Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?”
Because Facebook isn’t enterprise software. It’s written in a crap language, PHP and then hacked into C++ through an interpreter because Facebook doesn’t want to hire employees who know a enterprise scalable language, instead they want to keep 500 developers on staff making 60k because they learned PHP in school and don’t know their ass from their elbow about business.
Running out of incontinence pads, are we?
Agreed that FB is ALWAYS broken, application development decisions are questionable at best (removing/loosening certain privacy restricting features), and that their support arm is totally non-existent. The IDEA of FB is marvelous. If they knew how to write UIs that were not “hostile” it would be very useful. I admit to using it, but only because “everyone” is there. I am constantly seeking a new interface. Good cloud apps should try to better their customer’s experience.
Man – do people really want to tell facebook how to do cloud apps…and complain how much they suck?
Instead, ask why have they been so successful in a competitive marketplace.
Reading some of these comments is hilarious – everyone knows better, but really, what have they done? Built any ‘cloud’ apps that are more successful than FB? Yeah. Thought so.
Oh – and to the OP. Stop confusing technology with interface design. The question being asked is – how come users of enterprise software need days and days of training (and still can’t use the bloody thing), while facebook users simply pick up and go?
Final point – the primary salesforce interface today IS now one of those apps that requires days of training for both admin and end use.
The problem with most enterprise software and apps is that it’s more about politics, end users, power users, and everything else. There are legacy systems still in place, mainframes, 10 year old systems, open source, ms, etc etc etc.
Facebook is great for what it does but it really doesn’t do that much when it comes to getting users actual data. Behind the scenes they might have billions and billions of records and analytics but for the common everyday user, they don’t see any of this and don’t ever need to.
These days for an enterprise or government entity or a hospital or non profit group common administrative assistants need to get reports to their managers, they need graphs and charts and everything else. Then the managers need some more analytics or predictions and the IT staff develop something new, the end users take a look at it and formulate their own opinions and then the managers and Executives approve or reject or ask more questions.
And ‘in the cloud’ has been a nightmare compared to actually having the damn stuff onsite. If you use some SAAS or Cloud system the connections are slow, you don’t control your own data, half the time you have view access instead of tables in the databases, you get charged an arm and a leg for extra features that really should be normal, then things get shut down for an update without real warnings, etc etc etc.
Services in the Cloud are great in one sense, but at the same time most of these services are miserable if you store your data in the cloud.
Well it may “do it” for 300 million but it doesn’t solve any problems I have, nor does it entertain me either. I may look at a FaceBook site once a month. If it disappeared tomorrow I don’t think I’d notice.
Guess I don’t hang with the cool crowd.
Same here. I know several of my friends stay on facebook for hours a day, for me it's enough to check it once or twice a months. It's the worst time stealing application ever invented.
I think this post is even too obscure for the Techcrunch audience! Is there a salesforce blog somewhere this could have been posted on?
Exactly! I mean come on TechCrunch was this a paid advertisement and I missed the notation from the Editor?
Article Summary: The world is becoming social, my company has more overpriced stuff you should use to feel social at work. I am brilliant!
Whew. . .no kidding. I’m all for a great sales pitch. . .but am a bit surprised to find it on TechCrunch.
Will TC be allowing the CEO’s of SaaS companies pitch as well?
To me it seams it’s all about the fact that a larger application like salesforce can send customized tweets to chatter for specific events. So each event triggers a different type of tweet that is represented with relevant meta-data in the chatter stream. That seams to be the crux of what’s going on here. So for example, if a sales rep closes a deal, the tweet will have info about who the deal was closed with and how much. If a new employee was hired, it might provide some background info about the person. All in the stream. i.e. just like how Facebook has different types of stream posts for events, photos, apps, status updates, etc.
Marc, am I wrong? What in terms of precise features define Chatter?
I rather ask “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Google?”
“Why isn’t all enterprise software like Google?”
– Because Google doesn’t get backwards compatibility. Try using any of their API’s and you’ll see they regularly break a core tenet of API best practices “support backwards compatibility”.
They don’t get enterprise yet – they are used to doing whatever they want, breaking existing customers & partners in the process.
Some years back I was wrote about a feed system that would tag individual “posts” with two or more pieces of information — what it was and who it got shared with. Twitter came along with a blatant disregard for privacy and as usual showed that my ideas were too complex.
I would still like to see some of those tools, but simplicity in action seems to be picked up much more quickly than facilitating search.
Good read, Facebook is a great way to bring in information about many of the people I know (close and distant). Bringing this type of experience to a company could be a huge step forward on how business are run.
Nice ad for Behind The Cloud and Salesforce. Douche.
Everyone who has big, new ideas and talks about them alot (or forms companies around them) has lots of referenceable material and it would be much more weird if he didn’t reference what he’s already written or created along the lines of his writing here.
Or maybe you’ve never been in a position to understand that dynamic …
The point is it is one big blatant promotion for his products. I got no value nor did anyone else from the pontification.
we would love to beta test chatter at HireRight.
If you want in on the beta, you can email iwantchatter(at)salesforce(dot)com.
I’m curious of your thoughts on how something like Chatter will change the idea of productivity in the workplace. It seems every now and then some egghead will release a ‘finding’ that tells how much time/productivity in the workplace is lost to things like FB and Twitter — and yet it seems that Chatter’s operational theme is based on these same productivity zapping concepts.
Essentially I’m asking is it more productive to DO the work, or Chatter about the work being done?
paul,
i think the idea is that chatter will open more doors to do more work.
True. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHam8glLuj4
Wow, this is a thinly veiled advertisement for Salesforce & Salesforce Chatter. Why not just say “Editor’s Note: This is an advertisement and not journalism.”
Actually, you’re wrong.
It’s not thinly veiled at ALL. I’d say it’s outright blatant.
This should have instead been posted on TechShill
the main disagreement, is there is so much noise in social stream that it will be impossible for anyone to get work done. Even emails… to go through every single one every time it get sent.. would render a person useless.. now imagine that times 100 with a social stream thats pushed to you.
agree.. this article should be taken down for the blatant ad for not only salesforce, but the book also. He clearly could of spoken about this concept without mentioning the book or salesforce products
I will agree. However, I did get a few decent ideas from the discussion, so it may be worth it after all…
I agree. People get used to using applications that are dead simple to use, like Facebook, Flickr, and Youtube…when we go to work, we don’t want to be held back by ancient software with 1990′s user interfaces and cumbersome product manuals.
That’s where I think products from Salesforce for CRM, Box.net for content management, and Gmail for communication can make a huge difference.
(Full disclosure, I work at Box.net…and we’re hiring!)
No offence, but I could have sworn this was TechNews, Not TechSalesPitch
How much did Salesforce.com pay to get this posted?
if a blogger gets paid to promote something, it’s advertising and disclosure is adviced.
what is this post then? it sure is advertising except here the blogger let the advertiser blog about the product himself…
this post is very very very questionable…
GO MARC! Software SUCKS!
you are right ,sir
I was a sfdc user at my last company and this is exactly what was missing. although it was a very good tool, sfdc was lacking the stickiness to return to it on a daily basis because it didn’t provide enough value as a sales tool alone. if you integrate social conversation into it, i would rather go there every couple hours compared to my company home page that gets updated only once a day with a couple articles. that would then lead me to actually use the core functionality of sfdc more often as well. great strategy
Ah, the abused art of the thinly veiled advertisement guest blog post finally reaches TechCrunch – good job sir.
Congratulations to the Salesforce.com PR team, what a great placement.
At the end of the day is Chatter going to be productive for any Company that uses it, or is it going to be totally unproductive.
After all socialising normally means leisure time and thats not good for any Company.
Chatter could be an interesting tool for the Enterprise, but it is not the be all or end all for businesses that want to work in the cloud.
But with the right magic sauce, the cloud would change the way businesses and consumers interact online. Thereby crushing the power of Search Engines and making current passive websites seem so 1990′s.
My magic sauce is almost ready. Now all I need is a good chef and a top team.
I like the fundamental question in this post.
Just a small fun fact: The big ol’ bag of software we know as Lotus Notes actually started out as a message-board and spawned an online community, so “They were conceived before anyone knew what a “newsfeed” was. (In fact, Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg was!)”, isn’t quite true :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Notes#History
I think Mark has a point. For some reason, the direction of innovation in tech seems to be from consumer to enterprise apps.
W’ve seen the streaming, real-time interface adopted not just in the likes of Facebook, but in Linkedin as well. Bearing in mind that SAP doesn’t even have a workflow notification system (letting you know for example when a transaction is awaiting your approval), this is a good idea.
I can see when logging into enterprise software, a notification stream letting you know who has done what, what targets have been reached, what is awaiting your action, when new customers /contracts have been signed, month-end processes completed, etc.
I do think this is the new UI frontier for enterprise apps.
nobody really cares about the social aspect in the enterprise. Companies are so obsessed with productive work that has a direct impact to the bottomline. A social software in the enterprise just promotes unproductive work, labor union and the works.
Good luck with your chatter, sure you’ll get some market share but that’s it, you won’t make a dent on SharePoint.
http://www.techticles.com/why-chatter-of-salesforce-com-wouldnt-nudge-sharepoint.page
Marc – it sounds like you’ll have a decision to make should Facebook ever add some CRM functionality. Will you continue to login to 2 platforms… or will you converge onto 1as you’ve done with your social life?
I already know your answer… and the Facebook / CRM idea is probably far far off. But be careful what you wish for… Facebook is the Internet.
Very lame. This might as well be a paid advertisement.
Completely agree with this. I am a process improvement advisor and could totally see a specific threaded comments system in two areas. Orgs that have a heavy engineering component to their sales process and Hospitals. Even new electronic order entry systems in hospitals for patient’s orders do not effectively or efficiently communicate what needs to be done and when it is completed. Yammer and the folks that make the handheld “twitter/FB” posting only devices could improve both productivity and quality in Healthcare. It’s just that most of us old folks in decision making capacities don’t get it :P
Completely echo and agree with Marc’s thoughts on this.
Having experienced first hand the point around enterprise desktop where without any effort I can learn about what my team is focusing on, how my projects are progressing etc.,, is super engaging and productive.
Communication and Collaboration being real time is the key vehicle that makes businesses run on steroids!
I am glad that the industry is getting to use and learn about tools that are super important to our daily work lives.
Vishwa
http://www.engagesmart.com
I was actually very intrigued by this article’s title and by the reputation of the author. It may or may not have been the intention (I suspect it was), but this really came across as a new form of press release.
The subject matter in this article could have been far more insightful. I think it would have been better had he not spoken about Chatter, but rather in terms of the value of a Facebook-like type of model only.
Maybe it’s just me …