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Salesforce.com brightens Orange sales visibility with 300 user roll-out over 3G

Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), has been selected by Orange to give its 300-strong UK Business Solutions sales team a fully customised CRM solution to improve visibility of its customer leads and provide more accurate sales forecasting.

Salesforce.com has been rolled out to the entire Business Solutions team, 200 of which work remotely, over its 3G network. The system has been fully integrated with business reference tools including Dun & Bradstreet and has taken elements from existing customer information systems to ensure all resources are available on-demand from one central source.

Orange is one of the 15,500 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2005. Its headline goal was to improve the coordination, management and tracking of all sales and account management activity.

Orange had five clear objectives it wanted to achieve as part of the salesforce.com implementation.

1. Ensure 75% of the business solutions sales team are logging on daily
2. Allow sales information to be updated at any time from anywhere — in real-time
3. Improve the quality of information stored on the system
4. Reduce the time taken to track and report on opportunities
5. Remove locally stored customer information within three months

Orange wanted to deliver a solution that was quick and easy to learn and which would enhance the sales teams' day-to-day activities. "With an ambitious objective of 75% of the sales force logging on to the CRM system daily, we couldn't afford for our CRM system to be prohibitive either due to its complex user interface, limited customisation or its integration with our own mobile solutions," said Neil Laidler, director of business customer development at Orange Business Solutions. "With salesforce.com, we found a solution which provoked a positive reaction from both the sales users and other teams around the business."

"Orange is a technology innovator and is globally recognised as a pioneer in the field of mobile communications," said Steve Garnett, SVP & general manager EMEA at salesforce.com. "It seems fit then that it has chosen salesforce.com as its CRM provider over a more traditional vendor which couldn't compete on roll-out timescales, user-friendliness or customisation. We're anticipating a long-term relationship with Orange which will scale-up over time based on the combination of Orange's vision and our ability to offer increased benefit at reduced cost and risk. We're excited about a partnership with a company with such synergies to our own."