Small businesses to benefit from Google/Salesforce alliance

Google and Salesforce.com enter into a strategic alliance

Small businesses will benefit from a combined Google and Salesforce.com web service which gives the ability to monitor sales spend and performance more effectively.

The collaboration, which will operate across 43 countries, sees the launch of Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, an integrated online sales and marketing system that combines Salesforce.com's on-demand customer relationship management applications with Google's AdWords tool.

Ovum analyst David Bradshaw says the new offering allows smaller companies to monitor the effectiveness of online advertising using tools typically available only to larger firms.

‘To be able to track all the way through from the ads businesses place on Google to sales revenue is something the larger companies can do because they have in-house marketing and technical resources,’ he said.

Bradshaw says that advert tracking tools are available, but smaller companies do not have the resources to use them effectively.

‘Ad-tracking tools need some work to actually achieve the benefits they offer and you need staff who are dedicated to marketing to understand what’s going on and build reports,’ he said.

‘With the new web site, all that’s now coming out of the box.'

The agreement allows Salesforce.com to become the first on-demand company to resell the Google AdWords platform.

The new customer offering follows speculation about what form the Google and Salesforce.com collaboration will take.

The suppliers have also announced plans to work together across areas including technology development, marketing, distribution, communities and corporate philanthropy.