Salesforce.com has launched a private beta programme for Salesforce Chatter, a real-time enterprise collaboration application and platform.
Salesforce.com says the platform is the first ever trusted, secure enterprise application that allows companies to collaborate in real-time through profiles, feeds and status updates.
Salesforce.com hopes Chatter will help remove the cost and complexity of legacy software such as SharePoint and Lotus Notes from companies.
According to Salesforce.com Chatter delivers relevant information to users based on the people, documents, and apps they decide to follow.
The Chatter social networks feature allows companies to pull in relevant information from social media about the company and its customers. For example, employees can monitor the Twitter conversation about a particular prospect or competitor from within Chatter.
Chatter users will be able to create business profiles with professional information, helping colleagues to quickly identify individuals who can help contribute to the success of their project or task using relevant, context-specific information.
Salesforce.com says that status updates will âbreak the cycle of chasing critical information’. Through this feature, employees can even share files and links to provide additional context around a project, sales deal or customer support case.
The company adds that real-time feeds will provide employees with personalised updates from people, applications and documents, while application updates will publish all relevant status updates from a customer’s Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or custom Force.com applications.
The apps also have the ability to post status updates that can automatically flag time-sensitive developments like a new sales opportunity or change in customer contact which empowers employees to harness the real-time power of Chatter to do better business.
“The end of legacy collaboration software like Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus Notes is here,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.
“Consumer Internet services like Facebook and Twitter have shown us better ways to collaborate. Using the same social features and real-time feeds popularised by these consumer services, Salesforce Chatter changes the game for collaboration in the enterprise – all without the cost and complexity of software.”
Employees from one hundred industries around the globe, including Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and TransUnion have been invited to collaborate in the programme and will be able to access Chatter’s real-time feeds via BlackBerry or iPhone mobile devices.
The Chatter private beta will allow customers to provide feedback to salesforce.com on the technology experience before it is generally available.
