We speak with hundreds of large, established organizations around the world every week. And based on their stories we can only conclude it's a tough world out there. But you probably already knew that. So let's get more specific.

Many of these companies are locked into expensive and inflexible CRM software systems. Incidentally, this is not a “once upon a time” anecdote. It is now, right here in mid-2012.

These systems aren't flexible and agile to accommodate the rapidly changing needs of growing businesses. To point out just one example, given the intensive merger and acquisition activity at most companies, seemingly simple actions like quickly adding new users can impair operational plans.

On top of that they are difficult to learn to use. In fact sales representatives find it so difficult to access the information they need, that many don't even bother using these systems. They simply operate the old-fashioned way – with…spreadsheets, perish the thought.

For those employees who do use these systems, they find they cannot work how and where they want to work. Furthermore, these systems don't help foster collaboration around purposeful work activities such as progressing sales opportunities. And these systems aren’t built for the specific role-based needs of critical sales users.

And who is responsible for purchasing and maintaining the hardware that runs older CRM systems? You are.

Of course there is a better way. That’s why we at Salesforce have become #1 in sales automation, and are transforming a rapidly growing number of organizations to social selling enterprises with the Sales Cloud. Thomson Reuters is one of these companies. While the roots of Thomson Reuters go back to 1851, its business model is extremely progressive, and now with the Sales Cloud its sales users are operating very much in the present tense.

Thomson Reuters, and 100,000+ other Salesforce customers use the Sales Cloud to help power the most critical actions executives, reps and operations professionals take every day. And they use it to collaborate in real-time – around the activities, reports, dashboards and documents that are most important in the moment.

The benefits speak for themselves. In the latest survey conducted by an independent research firm, a random sample of more than 5,500 customers reported significant improvements through their use of the Sales Cloud, including lead conversion and sales productivity gains of more than 32 percent, and revenue increases of more than 27 percent.

How can you ensure a happy ending for your sales automation story? Click here to see a brief video that highlights the ongoing sales transformation at Thomson Reuters, learn from Ovum Research how your organization can free itself from the shackles of costly CRM software from yesteryear, and find out more about the Sales Cloud.