Salesforce.com Raises the Stakes for Enterprise Cloud Computing Platforms with New Force.com Visual Process Manager

SAN FRANCISCO, January 21, 2010 --  Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced the availability of Force.com Visual Process Manager, a new capability of the Force.com platform that will help companies rapidly automate any business process. With the Force.com Visual Process Manager (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/process), customers can, for the first time, visually design any complex business process with an intuitive, visual design tool, and instantly run it in the cloud.

Companies in a wide variety of industries, including telecommunications, financial services, and manufacturing are looking for faster, easier and less complicated ways to automate their important business processes that connect their customers, employees, and operations. With Force.com Visual Process Manager, organizations can now build business process applications with greater flexibility and automate processes across all departments. Examples include:

• Sales: Call scripting and sales methodology automation
• Service: Customer issue resolution and product returns
• Finance: Billing and collections
• HR: Employee onboarding and performance management
• Legal: Contract management and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
• Operations: Surveys and supplier management

Prior to the Force.com Visual Process Manager, companies had to buy expensive on-premise software, hardware and infrastructure to automate processes. Furthermore, they could not innovate on these processes once they were deployed because the complexity of the software made changes cost-prohibitive.

Force.com Visual Process Manager: Rapidly Automate Business Processes in the Cloud
The Force.com Visual Process Manager combines the elegance of visual process design with the simplicity, low cost, and quick results of the Force.com cloud computing platform - empowering customers to continuously refine and enhance processes to improve operational efficiency or fulfill regulatory compliance. Since it's part of the Force.com platform, businesses can create dynamic and sophisticated business processes within their current Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2 deployments or custom Force.com applications. Force.com Visual Process Manager helps companies automate specific business processes by guiding users through multiple steps and recommending the next course of action, all without any coding. Features of the Force.com Visual Process Manager include:

• Process Designer - The Process Designer enables companies to easily design business processes via an intuitive user interface. It includes a library of process components such as presentation components like forms, questions, and choices, and logic components, like task assignments, decision trees, and approval processes. These components can be added to a visual process design diagram through simple drag-and-drop actions.
• Process Wizard Builder - The Process Wizard Builder enables companies to easily design wizards that walk end-users, step-by-step, through their business process.
• Process Simulator - With Process Simulator, customers can optimize the process design by simulating complex processes before they are deployed. For the first time, companies can now test the process flow entirely in the cloud, identify bottlenecks and conflicts, and immediately revise by reviewing each phase of a process.
• Real-time Process Engine - The real-time process engine runs all of a company's sophisticated processes and automatically scales to meet the needs of any size business. Based on the engine, complex processes can be carried out while enforcing business rules and adhering to best practices. 

The Force.com Visual Process Manager is based on technology acquired from Informavores. Salesforce.com acquired Informavores in 2009. Terms were not disclosed.

Comments on the News

• "The new Force.com Visual Process Manager is another example of why Force.com has become the cloud computing platform of choice in the enterprise," said George Hu, executive vice president, marketing and alliances, salesforce.com. "By eliminating the cost and complexity of legacy on-premise platforms like .NET, Websphere, and Lotus Notes, Force.com's multitenant approach helps enterprises build apps five times faster and at half the cost."
• “The use of Force.com Visual Process Manager furthers Saveology.com’s goal of consolidating our technology architecture and moving more of our business processes into the cloud leveraging the Force.com platform," said Barry Newman, vice president of IT, Saveology.com. "We continue to see improvements in productivity and time to market for new offerings and processes.”
• "Building and managing business processes with on-premise software has been needlessly complex and costly, requiring too much custom code and expensive infrastructure," said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and founder of the SaaS Showplace. “Force.com Visual Process Manager offers an easy-to-use process design tool that organizations can use on a pay-as-you-go basis to more quickly and cost-effectively build and manage business processes via the cloud.”

Force.com – The Industry’s Leading Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform

• Force.com is salesforce.com's enterprise cloud computing platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/cloud-platform/).
• Force.com provides everything companies need to quickly build and deliver business applications in the cloud, including a cloud database, powerful analytics, real-time workflow and approvals, programmable cloud logic, integration, mobile deployment, programmable user interface and Web site capabilities.
• Customers and partners have built more than 135,000 custom applications on Force.com to run their businesses, including, supply chain management, compliance tracking, brand management, accounts receivable, claims processing, time-off applications and much more.
• Force.com enables companies to build and deliver applications five times faster and at about half the cost of traditional client/server software platforms.

Pricing and Availability

• Force.com Visual Process Manager is now generally available to existing Enterprise and Unlimited Edition subscribers for $50 per user per month
• For more information, please visit http://www.salesforce.com/platform/process