Salesforce boost ‘social enterprise’ with new products

Salesforce revamped two products this week to extend its presence in the increasingly social workplace.

At the company's Cloudforce Social Enterprise event in San Francisco, it announced Salesforce Rypple and Salesforce Site.com, designed to improve elements of collaboration between vendors and their customers, said the company

Salesforce acquired human capital management (HCM) company Rypple last December and the product has now been integrated within Salesforce to improve intra-company communication.

Rypple has been designed to enable companies to engage with all their employees by setting individual targets and to provide feedback. It has now been integrated within the CRM product so that Salesforce Rypple will be able to provide feedback on sales leads.

For example, a salesperson will able to give thanks to a customer service agent for providing great service to a customer, the company said.

The other new offering, Salesforce Site, is a re-branding of the company's site-building tool. The product now integrates other Salesforce products, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Force.com custom apps.

Other new features include template-driven sites to improve consistency, drag-and-drop forms, and built-in integration with Chatter, Salesforce's own social networking tool.

Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive (CEO) of Salesforce, said the new products were a reflection of the growing importance of social marketing.

"Salesforce.com is seeing unstoppable demand for the social enterprise as companies see their customers and employees become more social and mobile by the day," he said. Pricing for the products was also announced, with Salesforce Rypple starting at $5 per user, per month and $1,500 per month for the cost of a site developed through Salesforce Site.com.