Carlson streamlines global business operations with Salesforce Software-as-a-Service CRM

Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, has announced that Carlson, a global leader in travel, cruise, hotel, restaurant and marketing industries with annual sales of $37 billion, including franchised operations, has improved its operations and significantly increased productivity of staff in 40 countries with Salesforce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM and Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

With the help of salesforce.com partner Ben Nevis, Carlson deployed Salesforce across five of its operating groups, including Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Carlson Marketing Worldwide, Carlson Leisure Group and Regent Luxury Group. The company also utilised the Force.com platform and AppExchange to easily develop a customised solution that met its unique business requirements and served the needs of Carlson's Salesforce users around the globe.

Carlson is one of the 38,100 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of October 31, 2007. Revenue and subscribers will be recognised as the service is delivered.

"We had built a global enterprise, but did not have the tools necessary to utilise all of our valuable business account information and make it available to staff dispersed across 40 countries," said Anthony Forbes-Roberts, enterprise CRM manager at Carlson. "We explored a number of vendors in the market, but salesforce.com and the Force.com platform stood out for its product breadth and rich functionality."

After deploying Salesforce SaaS CRM, Carlson used the Force.com platform to develop customised applications for each of the five operating groups using the solution. In addition, AppExchange provided an easy way to add additional functionality and packaged customisations to Salesforce. Specifically, Carlson deployed Newmarket Commex, an event and meeting management application from Newmarket International, and CRMSurveyor, a customer survey tool from Vovici Corporation, among others.

The Force.com platform also enabled seamless integration with Carlson's enterprise applications, both homegrown solutions and those from other vendors, so the company has access to all critical business information from within Salesforce. Carlson also uses Force.com Mobile to extend this information access directly to its field staff, so they are fully prepared to maximise every customer contact, even while on the road.

"Since deploying Salesforce, we're saving money by not having to maintain legacy systems; we've increased staff productivity; and we have greater insight into our daily operations and long-term outlook," added Forbes-Roberts. "There is no question that Salesforce has improved our business and is helping drive our ongoing success."