A good friend once told me “this internet thing might just catch on”. Last week it was confirmed that not only did it catch on but it has grown into something no one could have imagined 20 years ago. I spent the day at “Cloudforce” in San Francisco on Thursday along with 10,000+ attendees who utilize or want to utilize Salesforce for their business. Long gone are the days where you had to drive to a local store to find something you wanted to buy or to just check it out. Also gone are the days of handwriting (gasp!) a complaint when you were dissatisfied. Companies are moving into an era of what Salesforce calls “The Social Enterprise”, where companies buy and sell over the internet and even handle customer service using the internet to monitor sites such as Facebook, and Twitter. Even the supply chain is being affected. The good ole days of maintaining and selling inventory from a spreadsheet are slowly slipping away.
Companies need to be flexible and good citizens among a variety of systems (ecommerce engines, VAR EDI connections and customer relationship systems) and all of them need to be accessible at any time. In today’s global economy there is never a time when a customer is not awake. Distributors want more information around delivery time and cost from their suppliers. Sales organizations want more visibility into available inventory, margins and resources. The internet is the fastest and most effective way to satisfy everyone’s data needs.
The internet is just not for email. It is now a place to build relationships with customers, suppliers and sales organizations. I guess my friend was right… this internet thing is catching on.
-JT
More From Less 