Bennett's Business Systems Leverages Salesforce.com's Appforce to Manage and Deploy Multiple Business-Critical Applications

Leading imaging solutions provider leverages the Appforce on-demand platform to create eight new business-specific applications, plans to publish many to AppExchange

SAN FRANCISCO — September 26, 2005 — Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the technology and market leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Bennett's Business Systems, a leading provider of imaging technology, has extended its Salesforce deployment by leveraging the Appforce platform to create, deploy and manage eight new business critical applications. Appforce is enabling Bennett's Business Systems to go beyond CRM and build new on-demand applications designed for product configuration and pricing; project management; recruiting; virtual forms engine; and document, inventory and customer equipment management. Appforce unites all of these applications with a single data model, single security model and a single user interface. Bennett's Business Systems plans to publish many of its applications to the AppExchange as well. Magma Design Automation is one of the 16,900 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of July 31, 2005.

"We chose Salesforce because of its reputation as the world's best CRM application and its deep customization capabilities. We were thrilled to learn in June 2005 about the additional power and flexibility the new Appforce platform provides beyond that," said Wes Benwick, President/CEO. "In just three months, we've been able to create, launch and gain complete user adoption of our eight Appforce applications. The efficiencies we've gained by utilizing these new applications has allowed my employees to spend at least 25% more time with our customers. We believe Appforce represents a dramatic leap forward for both on-demand applications and CRM in general and are excited to post many of our applications to the AppExchange."

The AppExchange, and its 70 new launch applications, are available for preview immediately. Customers can post and install applications starting with the release of Winter '06, currently expected in the fourth quarter.

Appforce enables Bennett's Business Systems to run eight unique on-demand applications built with the Appforce Builder tool, including:

  • Project Management for Software Development — Tracks development stages, deliverables, personnel and deadlines.
  • Product Configuration and Pricing — A complete repository of current configuration rules and pricing details readily accessible by sales and customer service staff.
  • IT Cabinet — Tracks internal deployment of company-owned computer equipment, including assignments, IP addresses and locations.
  • Recruiting — Provides comprehensive reports on personnel needs, headcount, attrition and budgets.
  • Document Management — Offers a complete catalog of internal company documents, including collateral, sales proposals and strategic planning schedules. Also enables complete version control tracking.
  • Inventory Management — Provides a complete overview of in-stock items and products on back-order.
  • Customer Equipment Asset Management — Offers complete details on customer product purchases, maintenance cycles and usage history.
  • Virtual Forms Engine — Allows for the dynamic design and creation of single and multi-page PDF documents using the data already in Salesforce.com.
In addition to benefiting from Appforce, Bennett's Business Systems chose Salesforce because of its intuitive, easy-to-use interface and reputation for delivering rapid deployments and fast user adoption. Bennett's Business Systems' sales and account executives are also deriving significant benefits from salesforce.com's anywhere, anytime access. With business critical sales information at their fingertips, salespeople in the field are truly enjoying an upper hand against competitors tethered to inflexible, traditional client/server enterprise CRM systems.

"With Salesforce, we've gained deep insight into what works and what doesn't in our business model," said Wes Benwick, President/CEO. "As a result, we've significantly improved client retention and benefited from new strategies that maximize the upselling and cross-selling potential in each account. Our salesforce.com deployment has made a truly dramatic and positive impact on how we do business."

About Bennett's Business Systems

Bennett's Business Systems helps its client's gain a competitive advantage by merging the latest in today's document imaging technology with traditional hardware to help small and medium-sized businesses manage their various business processes and paper based workflows. With more than 30 factory trained & certified service technicians, and growing software development & support group, its team is trained to respond quickly and work efficiently while doing the job right the first time. Bennett's maintains a large in-house leasing department, as well as $2.5 million in parts, supplies and equipment in its North Florida facility to ensure customers the highest level of service possible. More on the Web at www.bennetts.biz .

About Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM application, 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 AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.
    
As of April 30, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 43,600 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.

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