Microsoft Outlook is the most popular email client on the world market. In its various forms, Outlook is used by more than 800 million people worldwide. Gmail comes in at a distance second at 400 million active users worldwide.
For Salesforce.com, there are a number of email syncing and logging tools for Microsoft Outlook. Most of them work at the device level as a software plug-in. This causes problems for Salesforce.com users because software plug-ins do not work on all desktop versions of Outlook nor on many, if any, of the mobile versions of the email app.
The solution to this Tower of Outlook Babel is to move email integration away from a software solution to the cloud. This is consistent with Salesforce.com’s “No Software” promise. By moving email integration to the cloud, then all the different versions of Outlook, i.e., 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, Outlook.com and Office 365 Live can work with Salesforce.com simultaneously.
The key to Salesforce email integration in the cloud for is to use an open standard like IMAP. IMAP is a cross platform email integration standard that works with all the major email client brands such as Outlook, Gmail, Lotus, Open-Xchange, Thunderbird and GoDaddy.
Outlook integration in cloud offers another advantage – it is always on. With a software plug-in, Outlook email syncing and logging only works when the user is logged into his or her email account. If the user is busy, distracted, on vacation, traveling, sick or away from their device, email syncing does not occur. With a cloud-based solution like Match My Email, Outlook email syncing and logging is always on and working 24/7/365.
Cloud-based Outlook integration offers improved sales rep productivity. It is estimated to save a user more than 100 hours or 2 weeks of manual tasks per year versus an Outlook software plug-in.
