Salesforce.com's announcement of ContentExchange was a really exciting one. It's based around the pretty incredible content management system of our friends at Koral. BusinessWeek has given it in-depth coverage, and noted EchoSign's strategic role:
"Last year, [Salesforce.com]'s revenue grew 60%, to $497.1 million, though it broke even because of stock-option expenses. Sales in 2007 will rise as much as 45%, to $720 million (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/12/06, "Strong Sales Spark Salesforce.com"). To boost growth, Salesforce.com needs to enter new areas. But Benioff has also said he's wary of expanding too aggressively into markets beyond CRM, so as not to squelch the prospects of small companies that build additional features for Salesforce.com—and help drive new license sales. Such companies include Rally Software Development, EchoSign, and PowerSkills Solutions."
Look for EchoSign to aggressively be a part of this initiative. We think it will be huge and take Salesforce.com beyond CRM, much as EchoSign customers today can use EchoSign as a salestool inside of Salesforce -- and also integrated together with the web version outside of Salesforce as well. As IT|Redux noted:
"One scenario would be for a salesperson to draft a contract for an opportunity managed by the CRM system.
Following this scenario, the next step would be for the salesperson to send the contract to the customer for review and approval. Of course, this could be done as an email attachment or via fax, but a much better solution exists and is already integrated with Salesforce.com — EchoSign. Using this powerful yet extremely easy-to-use tool, the salesperson would be able to get the contract signed either electronically or via fax, without having to actually use a physical fax machine. And once the contract is signed, it could be stored directly into ContentExchange for archiving purposes."
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