Salesforce review

Technical Overview

• Webbased
• Outsourced, doesn’t run on our own servers, but on their servers

License

This product isn’t Open Source at all. Actually, you need to buy your subscription. It doesn’t run on our own servers, but on their servers. So all data is stored on their servers. This is just sooo scary. Why would a company use such a system? I want control my own information. And my information is private, I don’t want you (yes, that means you) to snoop around in mijn leads or oppertunities, why would I want another company to have access to this information?

I don’t want to use this product. But I came across it after hearing their talk at IT Conversations (actually, I’m listening to that podcast at this moment, the guy is telling me his blog is for his customers only). Not impressed, though.

Interface

Looks a lot like all other CRM systems. Messy and busy. Not impressed.

I’d like to take a moment here to explain what I’m looking for in an interface. Since I used to study Usability and Interface Design, I think I have a right to evaluate design and think about what it should look like. An interface should be easy on the eyes. Compare Squirrelmail screenshots with Hula screenshots and then with GMail’s screenshots. For the record, we deploy a lot of Squirrelmail webmail for companies and it works great and without hassles. But face it, we’re looking forward to Hula’s first really usable release, because that interface is plain better designed. But the optimal interface is GMail’s. “Less is more”, KISS, Occam’s Razor, etc. If you want people to actually use your products, KEEP THEM SIMPLE.

The first thing I thought when seeing Salesforce’s interface was “jee, this looks like SugarCRM”. Figures.

Workflow and Functionality

Can’t say a lot here. Why did I start reviewing this? Bah.

Conclusion

Absolute no-no. I don’t want to store my information somewhere else. I don’t want to use an interface that’s crammed with options.