Evernote teams up with Saleforce.com on collaboration app
Evernote wants to entrench its note-taking and sharing application more in businesses and hopes that a new Salesforce.com version will help it do so. Evernote for Salesforce, which debuts Friday at the Evernote Conference …
Context & Ripple Effects
Salesforce had already tested team productivity with Do.com for small teams, while Box's Salesforce integration established a precedent for bringing third-party content tools into the CRM environment. Salesforce's September 2013 Files launch broadened that approach by mapping files across several storage services.
Evernote's business push therefore moves beyond standalone note-taking: the Salesforce version gives it a place in the business software stack where customer and team work is already organized.
First-order effects
- Evernote gains a distribution path to Salesforce business users, while Salesforce adds a note-taking and sharing tool to its collaboration ecosystem.
- Salesforce users can connect Evernote's stored notes and sharing features more directly to the systems used for business work.
Second-order effects
- Box, Dropbox, SharePoint and other services connected through Salesforce Files face a broader competition for where teams keep and share working information inside Salesforce.
- The integration makes Salesforce more valuable as a hub for third-party productivity tools, rather than only a destination for customer records.
Third-order effects
- If Salesforce continues to pull specialized productivity apps into its environment, business collaboration will increasingly be shaped by integrations with systems of record rather than by standalone tools.
- The pattern favors vendors such as Evernote that can translate consumer-style productivity products into enterprise workflows and administration.
The trend: Business software is shifting toward CRM-centered collaboration ecosystems that aggregate notes, files and team productivity tools from multiple vendors.