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New Independent Survey Reports Salesforce.com Customers are Growing Their Businesses with Cloud Computing

Posted on: Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 07:05 CST

Salesforce CRM customers report exceptional business results: 34% revenue growth, 17% profit margin improvement, and 25% increase in overall customer satisfaction

Free from the high costs of software, salesforce.com customers confirm that cloud computing is the right answer for right now

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today released the results of its biannual customer satisfaction survey of more than 3,000 global customers conducted by independent research firm MarketTools Inc., in December 2008. The business executives surveyed are growing their businesses using Salesforce CRM with a reported 34 percent increase in revenue growth, 17 percent increase in profit margin improvement, and a 25 percent increase in overall customer satisfaction. They are also controlling costs using Salesforce CRM with a 23 percent decrease in customer service and support costs and a 27 percent increase in sales productivity.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO)

"In times like these, Salesforce CRM customers are continuing to experience significant success due to our cloud computing model, which frees them from the high cost and constraints of traditional software," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. "It is critical in today's economy that customers are able to grow their businesses and not their costs. We are proud of the successes our customers are experiencing with Salesforce CRM."

"We had a 44% increase in sales revenue," said Gigi Ochoa, Business Systems Developer, NetQos.

"Salesforce CRM has been a great investment for us," said Doug Liljegren, Director of Sales Operations, Data Systems International. "It has improved visibility to our global sales opportunities, accelerated our sales processes and enabled us to better analyze our sales territories across multiple lines of business. It will be a great tool to maintain sales volume in this current economy."

Demonstrating the loyalty of salesforce.com's customer base, 94 percent of customers surveyed indicate they "definitely" or "probably will" continue to use Salesforce CRM in the future. Ninety-two percent indicate they "definitely" or "probably will" recommend Salesforce CRM to others. In fact, 77 percent of those surveyed have already recommended salesforce.com to a colleague.

The survey also found that Salesforce CRM is yielding a strong return on investment for its customers. The business executive respondents in the survey report rapid time-to-benefit with Salesforce CRM implementations taking an average of 44 days without the burden of having to purchase, install or maintain software or infrastructure. They also report achieving an average return on investment of 65 percent in less than one year of implementing Salesforce CRM.

In addition, these same executives report achieving the following business improvements with Salesforce CRM:

• 52% Increase in lead volume
• 36% Increase in service and support productivity
• 33% Increase in lead conversion rate
• 30% Increase in customer retention
• 27% Increase in win rates

Overall, Salesforce CRM's highest customer satisfaction rating continues to come from the reliability of the Salesforce service. Salesforce CRM benefits from the proven security, reliability and scalability of the multi-tenant Force.com platform, which allows salesforce.com to continuously deliver new applications and features seamlessly to all 51,800 customers. Other top customer satisfaction ratings are the consistency and readability of the Salesforce CRM user interface; ease of use; and depth of CRM features.

About CustomerSat, Inc.

CustomerSat, acquired by MarketTools, Inc. in 2008, is the leading provider of real-time enterprise feedback management systems. With solutions designed to capture data from a variety of "touch points," CustomerSat helps clients pinpoint actions and prioritize efforts to help optimize business performance and provides executives across the management enterprise with customized reports and analytics.

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.

SOURCE Salesforce.com

Source: PR Newswire

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