Salesforce.com Kicks Off the Year of Cloud Computing With Salesforce CRM Spring '09
February 10 2009 - 8:05AM
PR Newswire (US)
28th generation release allows companies to more effectively grow
their business without growing capital expense or headcount SAN
FRANCISCO, Feb. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE:
CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today delivered
Salesforce CRM Spring '09, the cloud computing solution for
customer service and sales, to more than 51,800 customers as of
October 31, 2008. Built on the Force.com platform, Salesforce CRM
is the fastest, most flexible CRM service on the market, helping
companies better serve their customers without the cost, risk and
complexity of traditional on-premise software. Salesforce CRM
Spring '09, salesforce.com's 28th generation release, transforms
CRM into an intelligent tool that helps companies leverage valuable
data across customer service and sales to grow their business. With
more than 50 new features, Salesforce CRM Spring '09 enables
companies to service customers more effectively and close more
business. (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO) "This is
the year of cloud computing for the CRM industry and salesforce.com
is the undisputed leader," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at
salesforce.com. "Salesforce.com is helping companies grow their
business without growing costs by delivering a cloud computing
solution for customer service and sales with Salesforce CRM Spring
'09." "Salesforce.com is the leading cloud computing solution for
customer service and sales," said Rebecca Wettemann, Vice President
of Research, Nucleus Research. "The cloud computing model gives
customers a low-cost, low-risk way to run their business without
incurring significant upfront costs and helps customer service and
sales representatives work smarter - a key advantage in today's
climate." Salesforce CRM - The Year of Cloud Computing for CRM
Salesforce.com is delivering the power of cloud computing to the
CRM industry at an unprecedented pace. In the past year alone, more
than 200 new features have been delivered to salesforce.com
customers, including 50+ new features in Salesforce CRM Spring '09.
These new technologies have extended the value of customers' CRM
deployments, becoming a vital tool for thousands of companies
around the world. In fact, a recent customer satisfaction survey of
more than 3,000 global salesforce.com customers found that business
executives surveyed are growing their businesses using Salesforce
CRM, with a reported 52 percent increase in lead volume, 27 percent
increase in win rates, and 30 percent increase in customer
retention. Service Cloud - Transforming Customer Service through
Cloud Computing Salesforce.com has long evangelized the benefits of
cloud computing for the enterprise, and 6,500 companies, including
Enterasys, Misys Banking Systems and Plantronics, have already
standardized on Salesforce CRM and the Service Cloud for their
customer service operations. Announced in mid-January of this year,
the Service Cloud is the next-generation solution for customer
service. -- Service Cloud - Built on the Force.com platform, the
Service Cloud transforms customer service through the power of
cloud computing, and brings together industry leading cloud
computing platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.com to capture
every conversation and leverage every community expert in the
cloud. By capturing these conversations, the Service Cloud helps
companies deliver the expertise of the community to customers,
agents and partners regardless of location or device - ensuring
that the quality of customer service is consistent across every
channel. The Service Cloud represents the future of customer
service, where more than two-thirds of all service conversations
will take place in the cloud. "Customers are already sharing
knowledge and having meaningful support conversations in the cloud
with their community of friends and experts. Salesforce.com and the
Service Cloud will allow us to join the conversation with this
expert community to improve the way we serve our customers," said
Bill Hoban, CIO of Extra Space Storage. Sales Cloud - The Next
Generation of Collaboration for Sales, Marketing and Customers When
sales and marketing departments collaborate, everyone is connected
to the best information, best content, best strategies and best
practices across the entire enterprise - helping companies close
more deals and grow their business. Salesforce CRM Spring '09
delivers four new features focused on sales and marketing
collaboration: -- Opportunity Genius - The Opportunity Genius
feature in Salesforce CRM Spring '09 will let companies tap into
the collective wisdom of their sales organizations to arm sales
representatives with the best practices and the right knowledge to
close every deal. Opportunity Genius connects different sales reps
by suggesting similar deals based on designated fields in the
opportunity record. Now, reps can reach out and connect to other
colleagues working on similar deals. -- Content Assembly - For the
first time, customers will be able to create new sales and
marketing materials by leveraging existing presentations found in
Salesforce CRM. Subscribers will be able to search individual
slides to find the most relevant content across their entire
company. Once users find the right slides, they can drag and drop
them into a custom presentation and rearrange the entire deck
within a simple, intuitive user interface. -- Content Delivery -
Sending a large file to a prospect presents a number of challenges
including inbox size limits, extended download times, and limited
knowledge about what actions are taken with the content. With
Salesforce CRM Spring '09, it's now easy to package presentations,
videos, proposals, and more. Salesforce CRM lets users transform
presentations and other relevant content into URL links that can be
sent and viewed by external recipients. Now, recipients have more
choices: they can view the content, download it, or both. --
Content Tracking - By delivering content as a hyperlink, sales and
marketing professionals using Salesforce CRM Spring '09 have a leg
up on the competition. With the Content Tracking feature in
Salesforce CRM Spring '09, sales and marketing professionals will
know who views their materials so they can follow-up immediately.
Companies can also track all of the actions taken with the link,
including downloads and the amount of time spent viewing the
content. "Salesforce CRM has given our company the competitive edge
in today's marketplace," said Chris Luvara of Intacct. "Salesforce
CRM Spring '09 will be an invaluable resource in our sales cycle as
we manage, build and deliver content to our customers and
prospects." The Only CRM Built on an Enterprise Cloud Computing
Platform, Force.com The Force.com platform has helped Salesforce
CRM to become the industry leader at an unprecedented pace. With
proven security, reliability, and scalability, the Force.com
platform's multi-tenant model lets salesforce.com continuously
deliver new applications and features to all 51,800 customers -
seamlessly. By providing the necessary tools for companies to
customize and integrate their deployments, the Force.com platform
powers Salesforce CRM with unmatched levels of flexibility and
performance, all without requiring customers to buy or manage
additional infrastructure. Pricing and Availability
Salesforce.com's Spring '09 is currently available to all 51,800
customers. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications
should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are
currently available. Please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/community/spring09/spring09.jsp for more
information. About salesforce.com Salesforce.com is the enterprise
cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of SaaS
applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at
http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways
that customers manage and share business information over the
Internet. The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers,
developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications
that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise.
Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at
http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and
installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's Force.com
AppExchange marketplace available at
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/. As of October 31, 2008,
salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately
51,800 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan
Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks.
Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other
press releases or public statements are not currently available and
may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase
salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions
based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com
has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia,
and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol
"CRM". For more information please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Copyright
(c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and
the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com,
inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered
trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their
respective owners.
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http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Salesforce.com CONTACT:
Katy Dormer of salesforce.com, +1-415-901-8595, Web Site:
http://www.salesforce.com/
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