Salesforce.com offers four primary editions: Group, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited. Salesforce.com provides a nice summary comparing each Salesforce edition. If you are considering Salesforce.com, carefully evaluate the feature differences — particularly between the Professional and Enterprise editions. While Salesforce.com’s Enterprise edition is pricier, many of my favorite tools and features are not available in the base Professional Edition, for instance:
- Automated workflow and approvals: Allows your company to design workflow rules and approval processes, and associate them with workflow actions, such as email alerts, tasks, field updates, or outbound messages.
- Record Types: Record types allow you to offer different business processes, pick list values, and page layouts to different users based on their profiles.
- Managing Multiple Business Processes: (Also ties back to Record Types). Categorize your opportunity stage, lead status, case status, and solution status pick list values into lists called Sales Processes, Lead Processes, Support Processes, or Solution Processes. For example, your company may have three sales divisions: banking, hospitality, and education. The banking sales team may follow a 7-step sales process preferred by the VP Sales for that division. However the VP Sales- Hospitality has her own 10-step sales process with sales stages entirely different than those of the banking division. Salesforce.com Enterprise or Unlimited Edition allows your company to manage these different sales processes and uniquely match the way you do business.
- Campaign Management: Campaign management is not part of the base Professional Edition but can be added for an additional cost. With Salesforce.com’s campaign feature you can plan, manage, and track your marketing campaigns. Examples of campaigns include direct mail, seminar, print advertisement, email, or other type of marketing efforts. With campaigns, you will be able to determine the number of leads, opportunities and the amount of business generated. Track your campaign statistics over time, and determine campaign ROI.
While saving money by cutting back is especially important in this economy, it’s equally important that you not cut back in areas where spending a little extra can have a major impact.
