December 6, 2007

Given that the source of innovation in the technology business is largely being driven by the consumer sector, it’s not surprising that Salesforce.com would adapt techniques form social networking engines like Facebook, or more business-focused equivalents like LinkedIn, to roll out its first B2B offering.

Called Salesforce-to-Salesforce, the new feature lets mutual Saelsforce.com users share data on a need-to-know basis. Like LinkedIn, Salesforce.com customers can invite other Salesforce.com customers to connect and see data that they select. The business model behind all this is for the inviter to pay a modest $100/month connection fee for each company that they invite. In essence, Salesforce-to-Salesforce could be used as a very cheap and less bureaucratic and complex alternative to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) or other information sharing B2B approaches.

The use cases for the new offering are pretty obvious: sharing leads or opportunities with a company that is one of your channel partners; options for invitees to subscribe to updates of relevant data; and an update feature that automatically syncs records held by mutual Salesforce-to-Salesforce partners. Obviously, this all only works if you and your trading partners are fellow Salesforce customers, but it’s a start.

Salesforce’s approach is a no-brainer. Because of the on demand, multi-tenanted architecture, Salesforce already holds all the data, and because it’s all on the same Salesforce platform, that means there are few issues over compatibility because the underlying platform, database, and development environment are the same. And anyway, if two or more companies are already Salesforce customers, there’s little reason not to let them exchange data on a carefully vetted basis as consenting adults. Using a LinkedIn type approach for invites also helps simplify one of the steps of electronic handshaking.

The major issue regarding compatibility, which is the ability for two Salesforce trading partners to electronically shake hands (a persistent nuisance for anyone experienced with EDI), is if one of the partners has taken advantage of Salesforce’s Force.com growing customization options. But if you do customize, using Salesforce’s environment at least means that whatever differences there are should be more explicitly documented than would have been the case with EDI.

---