Salesforce.com; a commodity product?

A study published today from Nucleus Research reveals that Salesforce.com's momentum may be slowing. The good news is that Salesforce.com's customers realized positive ROI, but most did so by simply replacing a paper-based or individual contact management solution.  Also, few companies had deployed to more than 500 users.  One of the biggest challenges facing Salesforce.com, according to Nucleus Research, is that 38 percent of Salesforce.com customers are open to switching vendors.

"This partly indicates the low switching costs of on-demand but highlights the fact that for many customers Salesforce.com is a commodity product, not a strategic one that impacts the way they do business,” said a press release.

The study also found that 28% of customers had deployed another CRM solution to supplement the functionality in Salesforce.com and achieve effective integration.

If it's going to win the next round, Salesforce.com will have to step-up its efforts to offer more functionality and strategic value to attract, retain, and grow with its customers.