Salesforce.com adds extra customisation

Hosted customer relationship management vendor Salesforce.com has released the latest version of its software, offering additional customisation.

Salesforce.com Spring '04 includes three new customisable tabs: products, contracts and solutions.

The new tabs are designed to allow non-IT staff to adapt the software to fit to the specific needs of their business by using the Salesforce.com Studio customisation suite.

Users can rename existing tabs - for example, changing 'customers' to 'patients' - and can also add new modules with objects and pages. Custom objects, such as expenses, can be added and tracked along with standard objects such as cases and accounts.

The software also includes sforce 3.0, which allows developers to work on more complex integration and customisation.

GE Commercial Finance rolled out the software to 70 sales staff in February. Kathy Hairsine, sales force effectiveness manager for the financial firm, said she had involved sales staff from the beginning of the implementation.

"The reason we went with Salesforce.com was a lot to do with the acceptance of the salespeople," she said.

The organisation is using the software across its sales process, including new business, leads and integration with its operational database. Hairsine said advantages included being able to make changes to the system without coding.

GE Commercial Finance is already working with the new contracts tab to allow salespeople to request contracts. Previously they had used an Access database developed internally.