Salesforce.com lifted the curtain on Salesforce Lightning today, the completely redesigned version of its core CRM product. As is often the case with Salesforce, the announcement included several pieces. At the same time, it announced the first in a series of industry-specific CRM packages.
The new version has been designed with a cleaner, more modern looking interface. It streamlines and updates many essential CRM tasks, making it faster and easier to visualize important data like how far you are from your monthly sales goals and your most important tasks to help you get there. The CRM tool is the first product built on the Lightning platform. Expect that over time the entire Salesforce product line will get a similar make-over.
Today’s package consists of three pieces with some clear branding goals: Lightning Experience, the new CRM tool; Lightning Design System with Lightning Components, which is the tool’s customization engine. Finally it includes Lightning App Builder, which builds upon the Salesforce 1 application development platform. It claims it’s an easier way to build applications on top of the Salesforce CRM tool.
Salesforce is the granddaddy of SaaS platforms, dating back to the late 90s. It’s no longer the plucky upstart. In fact it joined the Fortune 500 this year for the first time. It earned $1.63 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter and is projecting a total revenue for this fiscal year of over $6.6 billion.
Perhaps the company decided that, rather than resting on its laurels, it was time for a major makeover. Today’s announcement is all about making the tool more modern. The interface is cleaner and designed to work across all screen sizes from computer or laptop to tablet, phone or even the Apple Watch.
Salesforce listened to customer feedback before redesigning the product, and incorporated much of what it heard, Sean Alpert, senior director for Sales Cloud told TechCrunch.
What it heard was that busy sales people wanted access to essential data faster in a visual form that made it easier to see at a glance what is important. They also wanted an interface that was flexible and highly customizable.
