Call Center CRM News Blog TMC

267,000 Subscribers Can't Be Wrong

June 21, 2005

This morning brings the announcement of Salesforce.com Summer '05, the 18th inception of the San Francisco-based company's wildly successful hosted CRM system. Along with new features debuted with Summer '05 is the announcement that the company has created the world's first hosted operating system, Multiforce 1.0.

I agree in part with Marc Benioff's statement that Saleforce.com is, "the most robust, flexible and customizable on-demand applications that precisely conform to their business processes," but after having spent some time with SugarCRM (see blog from yesterday), I don't know if I'd call Salesforce.com "the most customizable."� Still...it's a product a great many people have had astronomical success with, and it certainly turned the enterprise business software industry on its ear.

Full release below.

TES

Salesforce.com
(NYSE: CRM), the technology and market leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced the general availability of Summer '05, the 18th generation of its industry-leading on-demand Salesforce and Supportforce CRM solutions. The Summer '05 product launch also includes Multiforce 1.0, the world's first on-demand operating system, the Customforce 2.0 on-demand application customization tool and the Sforce 6.0 on-demand integration platform. Salesforce.com's latest generation of products is an extraordinarily powerful, customizable and easy-to-integrate set of on-demand applications and application development technologies.
With Summer '05, salesforce.com enables enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies to gather, organize, share and communicate information to raise customer satisfaction and employee productivity to new heights. And with the introduction of Multiforce 1.0, customers also now benefit from an on-demand operating system that serves as the hub for managing and sharing their information on-demand. Multiforce makes running multiple salesforce.com and customer- and partner-created on-demand applications that go way beyond CRM faster, easier and more effective than ever before.
"With the Summer '05 release, salesforce.com has taken its game to the next level," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "Summer '05 further empowers salesforce.com's 15,500 customers with the most robust, flexible and customizable on-demand applications that precisely conform to their business processes, not the other way around. There's no question about it. The 'take it or leave it' era of legacy CRM vendors is officially over."�
Announced at salesforce.com's Summer '05 launch events, held June 21 in San Francisco, June 30 in London, and July 7 in Tokyo, Japan and Sydney, Australia, Summer '05 is now available to all 15,500 customers and 267,000 paying subscribers worldwide. Salesforce.com's on-demand model automatically delivers the new benefits and features of Summer '05 to the entire salesforce.com customer base at no additional cost. In addition, all existing customizations and integrations seamlessly migrate to the new release. Summer '05 is available in Personal, Team, Professional and Enterprise Editions, allowing customers to select the best product for their size of implementation and enterprise. Salesforce.com also continues its commitment to democratizing access to its solutions by making Multiforce 1.0 and Customforce 2.0 available in Professional Edition with Summer '05.

Summer '05 Product Details
Multiforce 1.0: The World's First On-Demand Operating SystemMultiforce 1.0
is the world's first on-demand operating system. It offers a complete environment that gives users a single platform to manage, deploy and access their salesforce.com applications, as well as whole new customer and partner applications created using Customforce. Multiforce 1.0 seamlessly unites all of these applications with a single data model, single security model, and a single user interface. With Multiforce 1.0, data can be easily shared and accessed across applications to enhance cross-organizational collaboration and eliminate silos of information.

-- Single Data Model -- All applications now share the same powerful data�model, which enables users to streamline application access and�eliminate deployment complexity.�
-- Single Security Model -- Multiforce allows the same security and�information sharing model at the heart of salesforce.com to be used�across all of a company's data, ensuring users from different�departments or groups only see the information appropriate to their�role, regardless of which Multiforce application they are using.�
-- Single User Interface -- During the past five years, salesforce.com has�continued to deliver applications offering unprecedented ease of use.�
Multiforce 1.0 now offers that same benefit for customer- and�partner-created applications. It provides a sleek, intuitive and�consistent user interface across all applications that seeks to be as�simple-to-use as Amazon.com or Google.�

"Multiforce is the complete on-demand application platform we've been waiting for," said Dean Dresser, Controller and Senior Director, Finance, ClearCube. "Multiforce literally puts all of our on-demand applications on the same page. With easy access, secure sharing and seamless application switching, Multiforce further underscores why salesforce.com's on-demand applications remain the unquestionable choice for driving sales and maximizing productivity while keeping IT costs to a minimum."

Salesforce Summer '05
Salesforce Summer '05 builds on the industry's leading on-demand sales force automation product with comprehensive and customizable sales methodologies, enhanced forecasting capabilities, marketing analytics and mass address updates.

-- Sales Methodologies -- Through salesforce.com's open approach, users�can integrate many selling methodologies into Salesforce Summer '05, including several built-in best-of-class offerings from Miller Heiman,�SPI (Solution Selling), The Complex Sale and ValueVision. These�methodologies help sales representatives capture and analyze data more�effectively to support all aspects of the selling process. All of these methodologies can be tailored to mesh with any organization's existing�processes. This open system makes legacy CRM vendors' model of locking�users into a single methodology a thing of the past.

-- Customizable Forecasting -- Salesforce users can now roll-up forecasts�according to exacting business criteria such as product line, time�period, direct report, forecast stage and revenue schedule. Users can�drill deep down into opportunities and benefit from an integrated,�global view that can be customized to meet different business needs.�
Users also have the ability to override data to control overall forecasts.
-- Marketing Analytics -- Enables users to ensure marketing campaigns�accurately reflect the sales pipeline by providing comprehensive�
real-time visibility into campaign lead status. Users can leverage that�analysis and make immediate adjustments to marketing campaigns to�ensure they are accurately targeted and segmented for maximum ROI.�
Salesforce also embeds state-of-the-art data management and cleansing�functionality to maintain data validity for precise reporting.�
-- Mass Address Update -- Identifies inconsistencies in data entry and�standardizes data values for higher data quality. It can also handle large-scale updates to eliminate poor-quality data, enabling more�accurate reporting and greater business insight.

"We are excited to roll out the new features available in the Summer '05
release from salesforce.com," said Patricia Menadier, Director of Sales Operations, Macromedia. "Summer '05's customizable forecasting will help increase confidence in sales forecasts and give us better visibility across our enterprise."

Supportforce Summer '05
Supportforce is salesforce.com's on-demand customer service application, launched with the support of the industry's leading contact center infrastructure providers including Avaya, Cisco Systems, Alcatel, Aspect Communications and Genesys (an Alcatel company). Supportforce Summer '05 updates include:�

-- Email Case Management -- Meets the needs of more sophisticated customer�service and support environments and greatly reduces the processing and�response time for customer emails. By using multiple customer service�email addresses, incoming messages can automatically generate cases�that are routed to appropriate case queues. Ongoing email interactions�with customers happen from within their cases for greater efficiency�and better tracking of all email dialogue.
-- Advanced Case Escalation -- Handles even the most challenging service�level commitments by adapting escalation rules to complex requirements.�
This new feature also helps ensure all cases are "touched" in a timely�manner through multiple escalation options.
-- Self-Service Portal Style Editor -- Enables users to make their�self-service portals match the look and feel of their company's�corporate Web site. Now, companies can quickly and easily configure and�launch easy-to-use self-service portals without any design or technical�assistance.

��� "The Summer '05 edition of Salesforce has impressive features and functionality that enable us to deliver excellent customer support with unprecedented ease," said Ginny Boney, Salesforce Project Manager, MedImpact.
"This is a product clearly designed to deliver the highest customer satisfaction levels possible while simultaneously maximizing the value of each customer interaction. Supportforce Summer '05 edition also enables us to produce the metrics we need to manage our business through its custom report formulas and calculated fields. Without question, salesforce.com represents the future of customer service and support solutions."

Customforce 2.0: The On-Demand Customization Tool
��� Customforce 2.0 builds on the extraordinary success and popularity of Customforce 1.0 that has seen users create more than seven million customizations to date. Customforce enables users to customize Salesforce and Supportforce features including workflow, controls, fields, tabs and objects with unprecedented ease and speed. Customforce 2.0 also allows customers and partners to build whole new powerful applications quickly and easily. Just a few of the hundreds of new application possibilities that go way beyond CRM include expense reporting, project management, schedule management and recruiting. Customforce 2.0 combines these unique abilities features with a brand new set of rich functionality, including:

-- Customforce Analytics -- Gain comprehensive visibility through real�time analysis of business data that incorporates visual highlighting�and custom calculations in reports and dashboards.
-- Customforce Formulas -- Create customized business formulas for�immediate, accurate decisions. Spreadsheet-style formulas and�calculations can be applied to any field in the application.
-- Customforce Business Processes -- Boost productivity and visibility by�leveraging more than 100 pre-built processes such as lead scoring,�discounting, quota attainment, round robin lead/case assignment, price totals, case aging and auto-dialing.
-- Customforce Standard Related Lists -- Customize any related list to�show relevant data for accounts, contacts, opportunities and cases.�

"Customforce 1.0 was a terrific achievement that made the inflexibility of traditional client/server CRM a thing of the past," said Chip Vanek, Director of Corporate and CRM Applications, Magma Design Automation. "Now, salesforce.com has taken many of our suggestions for further enhancements and incorporated them into Customforce 2.0. Customforce 2.0 is a tremendous base for new innovative corporate applications."

Sforce 6.0: The On-Demand Integration Platform
With its sixth major release, Sforce continues to enhance the Web services and integration capabilities that enterprises need to ensure their on-demand CRM systems seamlessly mesh with the rest of their enterprise architecture. Sforce 6.0 features these new capabilities:

-- Sforce Parter Portal Toolkit -- Helps companies easily create Web portals to better collaborate and communicate with partners, as well as get better insight into channel activity.
-- Sforce 6.0 Web Services API -- Now includes compatibility for�applications written for earlier versions of the SOAP (Simple Object�Access Protocol) API (Application Program Interface), starting with API�2.5. The new API also includes powerful enhancements that further�improve any integration already in place between Salesforce and other�systems.�
-- Sforce Data Loader -- An easy-to-use, highly scalable data management�tool that can perform large data uploads, mass updates, mass deletes�and exports for any Salesforce, Supportforce or custom application or�object.
-- Import De-Duplication -- Offers rapid import performance with built-in�data cleansing tools that eliminate duplicate data.�

"The combination of Sforce, Multiforce and Customforce further solidifies salesforce.com's technology and market leadership," said Cathy Bensink, Director, Americas' Sales Operations, TANDBERG, Inc. "Salesforce.com's Summer '05 release sets a new bar for on-demand applications. It's the most powerful, customizable and easy-to-deploy CRM solution we've ever encountered. With the Summer '05 release, we can focus on hitting our core deliverables and business goals instead of navigating through the endless maze of head-scratching complexity offered by traditional CRM vendors."

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM). Through its award-winning salesforce.com family of products including Salesforce (http://www.salesforce.com ) and Supportforce (http://www.supportforce.com ), the company provides a comprehensive suite of CRM applications to help enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies meet the complex challenge of sharing and managing information on-demand. Salesforce and Supportforce are built on the Sforce on demand integration platform and include Customforce tool complete on-demand customization. Sforce (http://www.sforce.com ) and Customforce(http://www.customforce.com ) allow customers and independent software vendors to customize and integrate salesforce.com's products, as well as build their own on-demand enterprise applications. As of April 30, 2005, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 15,500 customers and approximately 267,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices, America Online, Automatic Data Processing, Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom 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 our services 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.




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