How Do You Manage Client Contacts at Your Firm?

Wait a Minute. Who's Calling Whom? ... When a tech-savvy firm like Jones Lang LaSalle outsources its contact management system for new business development to salesforce.com, you know the world is changing. And that's exactly what I read last week in the salesforce newsletter. So I called Robert Best, Director of Emerging Technologies for JLL's Leasing & Management group, to get the full story.

Bob confirmed that contact management for JLL (or any other service provider) is a struggle. Developing a common software application, spreading usage over a corporate network and supporting users and hardware is a huge task. That's precisely the attraction of the salesforce.com ASP business model (meaning that JLL's information is hosted on salesforce.com's servers). No need for JLL's IT department to support and maintain its own software. For $50 per month per person (the first five users are free) JLL has unlimited usage of salesforce.com, any time, anywhere, through a web browser. Currently JLL has about 100 users in Leasing & Management that access the system, which contains thousands of JLL clients.

But the really cool part of the service is that JLL uses salesforce.com to forecast future revenue (based upon income potential and stage of the sales cycle). Managers can roll up potential income from all new clients. In other words, a contact management system can project income, which is vitally important for a publicly traded firm like Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE: JLL).... Per my November 27 Dispatch (core vs. context), why allocate your resources to develop a super contact management system when anybody can use salesforce.com? Instead, concentrate your resources on what makes you truly different. Good luck!

--Peter Pike