Salesforce.com is hoping to help businesses organise and locate customer information more effectively with Data.com, it emerged at Dreamforce 2011.
The service has been established thanks to an alliance with Dun & Bradstreet which serves businesses with information on over 200 million companies.
Data.com, which combines D&B data with Salesforce.com's Jigsaw contact information, acquired in the first half of 2010, will be delivered over the cloud through Salesforce.com's CRM products.
What we think...
Whilst the idea of having access to a huge pool of company and employee data sounds nice, it may carry privacy implications with it.
Employees may get upset if their contact information is being shared so readily, even though they are sharing it online. Hopefully Salesforce.com will take this into account.
Tom Brewster, Senior Staff Writer
"Delighting customers is knowing who they are and what they like," chief executive (CEO) Marc Benioff said during this morning's keynote. "With Data.com you can import data and clean it up and make it exactly how you need it for your company."
The new service is primarily aimed at sales workers where Salesforce.com makes most of its money - and will hope to help hone marketing campaigns and simplify account plans.
In an example of how Data.com could work, Salesforce.com showed how within its Sales Cloud, a company could click on a Data.com link and instantly download contact information they lack on a particular customer.
Data.com also forms part of Salesforce.com's social enterprise' drive, by helping to create "social customer profiles."
Data.com is available now, but only with Jigsaw information. Salesforce.com said the full version with D&B information would be available at some point later in the year with pricing and packaging to be revealed at that time.
We will have all the news and analysis you need from this year's Dreamforce 2011, where Salesforce.com is driving home the social message in earnest.
