Initiate Systems Chooses Salesforce.com and Supportforce Over Siebel for Complete CRM Success
28 April 2005
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM - News), the technology and market leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Initiate Systems, Inc. is using complete, customized on-demand CRM from salesforce.com to improve sales and marketing productivity and efficiency, increase customer satisfaction and gain new management insight. A leading provider of customer data integration software and services for the on-demand enterprise, Initiate Systems has used Salesforce to achieve double digit annual revenue growth and establish market dominance for its healthcare practice.
Initiate Systems selected salesforce.com over Siebel Systems for more robust on-demand CRM. In evaluation, Initiate Systems found Salesforce to be the only CRM that could be easily customized to track and report on Initiate Systems' sales and service data. This includes custom dashboard analytics that deliver a real-time snapshot of business segments for management. Initiate Systems selected Salesforce because of its top-ranked usability, easy Web integration for marketing campaign management, and integrated customer support functionality through the Supportforce on-demand customer service tool.
Initiate Systems is one of the 13,900 companies of all sizes that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of Jan. 31, 2005.
"Our business is enabling organizations to link and match customer data housed in multiple back-end systems and facilitate a trusted system of record for all an enterprise's customer data. We help CRM systems take advantage of data stored in other applications and make point-of-service users of systems like Salesforce more effective," said Bill Conroy, president and CEO, Initiate Systems. "For our internal CRM, it was essential that we turn to a company that supports our vision for customer data integration. Salesforce.com distinguished itself with its open architecture, customization capabilities, easy to use reporting and dashboards, and usability features of the application itself. "
Salesforce was implemented in four weeks with minimal IT involvement to allow sales, marketing, customer service and executive teams to share and manage consolidated prospect and customer information. In addition to customizing its CRM to match its own terminology and processes, Initiate Systems also quickly created a number of custom reports to track sales forecasts, partner activity, customer references and customer support cases. The executive team manages its business from a set of custom dashboards that can be viewed at any time.
With Customforce, salesforce.com provides every company the power to be unique. Representing a major breakthrough beyond cookie-cutter vertical solutions, Customforce enables ordinary business users to easily customize their CRM and create new on-demand applications through a simple point-and- click interface. Built into Salesforce and Supportforce, Customforce enables 13,900 companies to leverage the simplicity, power, and success of on demand to create 13,900 unique CRM editions. Customforce makes Salesforce the world's most customizable CRM.
Salesforce's integrated campaign management functionality has also delivered unforeseen benefits for Initiate Systems. Mass email capabilities streamline customer communication and leads from its Web site are automatically captured in Salesforce. This allows Initiate Systems to track campaign response and effectiveness. On the service side, an integrated customer support center provides a complete case history to customer service representatives for faster resolution of inquiries and improved service levels.
"We now have an our sales, marketing, and service teams working from the same prospect and customer information with a view into activities so that executive management is better able to plan, forecast, and direct," said Conroy. "And we have it on our own terms -- the Initiate Systems version of Salesforce. With Salesforce, we will continue to grow in 2005."
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 client/service integration platform and include the Customforce tool for 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 January 31, 2005, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 13,900 customers and approximately 227,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Automatic Data Processing (ADP), 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.
About Initiate Systems
Initiate Systems, Inc. (www.initiatesystems.com) is a leading provider of customer data integration software and services for the on-demand enterprise. Initiate Systems provides the most accurate, complete, up-to-the-moment information to all point-of-service applications, business intelligence platforms and back office systems. Initiate's award-winning Initiate Identity Hub(TM) software delivers high business value in many industries, including communications, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, retail and the public sector, by instantly finding and accurately linking all the records about a person, corporate entity or object across disparate data sources on-demand, regardless of data volume.
NOTE: Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and Sforce, Customforce.com and Supportforce.com are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California.
Initiate(TM), Initiate(SM), the Initiate logo, and Initiate Identity Hub(TM) are trademarks and/or service marks owned by Initiate Systems, Inc., which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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Source: Salesforce.com
Source: PR Newswire
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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