Kraton Polymers Standardizes on Salesforce On-Demand CRM and Platform Across its Global Business to Increase Revenues

SAN FRANCISCO - August 28, 2007 - Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Kraton Polymers LLC, a leading global engineered polymer company, is using Salesforce to gain greater insight into its organization to drive operational improvements and revenue growth.  With the help of salesforce.com partner Astadia, Kraton used the Salesforce Platform to easily customize Salesforce for its particular needs, developing a solution that compiles global enterprise resource planning data with prospect and customer data, making it available to users worldwide in an intuitive, easy-to-use format.

Kraton Polymers is one of the 35,300 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of July 31, 2007. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

"Before Salesforce, we were using multiple systems to store data, contact customers and track sales progress.  As a result, it was difficult to get an accurate and timely understanding of our pipeline and opportunities," said Kenneth Stumbaugh, Director of Strategic Analysis and Business Planning at Kraton Polymers.  "We chose Salesforce because it came equipped with what we needed and offered an easy way to configure our deployment to meet our specific needs.  It took only three months to roll out a customized Salesforce CRM solution that provides us with complete visibility into our global operations."

In addition to using the Salesforce Platform for customization, Kraton turned to the AppExchange for additional applications to complement their Salesforce deployment.  The company downloaded Jasper4Salesforce from JasperSoft, which provides additional reporting capabilities, along with a few AppExchange dashboard applications from salesforce.com.

With greater access to its pipeline data, Kraton's regional business managers can view the status of prospects, ensure timely completion of requests and see both how their business segment and individual sales representatives are performing against targets. The Kraton marketing team is using Salesforce to capture leads and track success metrics by campaign, trade show or other lead generation event, and can link specific income to their marketing expenditures.  Users in customer service are tracking issues from registering the customer complaint to case resolution.

"Kraton has already gained significant operational improvements with Salesforce, and we're excited to see how we can continue to maximize our investment and continue to improve our revenue potential," added Stumbaugh.  "With faster customer response times and a more strategic approach to our business, salesforce.com has truly given us a competitive edge."

About Kraton
Kraton is a leading global engineered polymer company and one of the world's largest producer of styrenic block copolymers (SBCs), a family of products whose chemistry was pioneered by Kraton over forty years ago.  SBCs are highly-engineered thermoplastic elastomers, which enhance the performance of numerous products by delivering a variety of attributes, including greater flexibility, resilience, strength, durability and processability.  Kraton polymers are used in a wide range of applications including adhesives, coatings, consumer and personal care products, sealants, lubricants, medical, packaging, automotive, paving, roofing, and footwear products.  Kraton has the leading position in nearly all of its core markets and is the only producer of SBCs with global manufacturing capability.  Its production facilities are located in the United States, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.

Executive Guide: 8 CRM Essentials Now Available
Read the 8 CRM Essentials for the must-have elements of proven CRM success. Based on insights from industry experts and more than 35,000 salesforce.com customers, this in-depth guide helps you understand innovative technologies and strategies for CRM success. Download the free report.