Content: 1. Summary of case study 2. Questions & Answers 3. Learning outcome
Summary of Case Study
* Role of Apple
Apple is a company known for creative, disruptive new technologies and business models. One of its most recent products, the iPhone, represents this kind of technology. Apple opened up its iPhone platform to third-party developers shortly after releasing it. They provide what’s known as the iPhone SDK (software development kit) to developers free of charge.
The iPhone is very different from other smart phones because of its third-party development environment. Third-party applications make the iPhone unique, and the iPhone is an example of an open development platform being beneficial to the parent company. Salesforce.com is just one of many companies hoping to take advantage of the iPhone platform to broaden the market for its applications.
* Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is a leading provider of software-as-a-service applications delivered over the Internet. The SaaS model is a departure from traditional software bought and installed on machines locally. Salesforce.com has been very successful and has shaken up the software industry with its innovative business model.
Salesforce.com developed SFA application for the iPhone using Apple’s iPhone software development platform (SDK): a striking, contemporary example of the emerging digital platform where most computing will take place by 2015.
* WHAT IS SFA?
SFA (Sales Force Automation) refers to a set of tools that record all the events in the sales process, as well as all pertinent data driven by those events. Even before the first SFA products began hitting the market in the early 1980s, this data was recognized as useful for the cultivation of individual customer relationships and, in aggregate, helpful for determining sales trends and setting sales policies. SFA solutions automate the