Salesforce.com
Company: salesforce.com, San Francisco, CA
Entry Submitted By: OutCast Communications
Company Description: salesforce.com is the leading enterprise cloud computing company. Founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, salesforce.com became the first $1 billion revenue cloud computing company in 2009, and has been called the fastest growing enterprise software company in the world by Barron’s.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories / Innovation Awards
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Company of the Year - More Than 2,500 Employees
Nomination Title: salesforce.com
1. Tell the story about what this nominated company achieved since January 1 2009 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
The past year has proven an exciting one for salesforce.com as the company
continues to redefine the enterprise software industry with cloud computing. In
2009, salesforce.com celebrated its 10th anniversary and continued to validate
its “No Software” mantra by now helping more than 72,500 enterprises achieve
success with cloud computing. The cloud revolution transformed an industry once
tarnished with high implementation costs, difficult implementations, low
customer satisfaction and adoption rates. In contrast, salesforce.com’s more
than two million users today are wowed by how easy and cost effective
cloud-based solutions are to deploy and use. This past year salesforce.com
unveiled yet another breakthrough technology, Salesforce Chatter, which will
liberate companies from the shackles of enterprise collaboration software,
ushering in the next paradigm for enterprise cloud computing, Cloud 2.
Salesforce.com is leading the Cloud 2 shift, which is inherently social,
collaborative and delivers real-time access to data and information across new
mobile devices. With Cloud 2, enterprises can accelerate their innovation and
growth - further distancing themselves from old collaboration systems huge
costs, complex implementations, low customer satisfaction and abysmal adoption
rates.
Chatter is the first social enterprise collaboration solution with profiles,
real-time feeds and status updates for not only people, but apps and data.
Salesforce.com’s customers will be able to realize tremendous success and grow
their business with Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2 which will be social and
collaborative. Sales reps and customer service agents can now stay on top of all
the latest information whether it’s a customer update from a colleague from
within their company or from a question by a customer on the Web. With Chatter
an entire company can be ‘smarter’ than ever using real-time feeds and mobile
access to information.
Other key innovations from salesforce.com this past year include the release of
Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2 which combine to make up salesforce.com’s
flagship CRM solution; and, both the lead in the respective Gartner Magic
quadrants for sales force automation and customer service. A recent customer
satisfaction survey of more than 6,000 global salesforce.com customers found
that Salesforce CRM customers are achieving success with on average 40 percent
increase in forecast accuracy, 27 percent increase in sales revenue and 32
percent increase in sales productivity.
Also in 2009, salesforce.com became the first $1 billion revenue cloud computing
company, and has been called the fastest growing enterprise software company in
the world by Barron’s. Salesforce.com’s key to success over its first decade in
business has been through its customers and continues to be as it looks toward
the next challenge in enterprise computing: collaboration.
2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
09.08.09 – Mashable, Salesforce for Twitter Launches
http://mashable.com/2009/09/08/service-cloud-2/
09.08.09 – TechCrunch, Everything You Need To Know About Salesforce’s Service
Cloud 2
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-salesforces-service-cloud-2/
11.17.09 – San Francisco Chronicle, Salesforce's Marc Benioff sees cloudy future
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/16/BU9R1AJ7OV.DTL&type=business
11.18.09 – BusinessWeek, Salesforce Jumps Into Collaboration Software With Chatter
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/salesforce_jump.html
11.18.09 – ReadWriteWeb, The Future of Salesforce.com? Twitter, Facebook and the
Social Web
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/11/routing-twitter-and-facebook-t.php
01.28.10 – The Economist, Yammering away at the office
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TVPVDJNR
Press Releases
Service Cloud 2 Launch:
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2009/09/090909.jsp
Chatter:
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2009/11/091118.jsp
Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2009/11/091118-1.jsp
3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated company:
Marc Benioff is the chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, which he co-founded in
1999. Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking
idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud
computing. Benioff is the recipient of many awards for pioneering innovation,
including the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2000, Benioff
launched the Salesforce.com Foundation—now a multimillion-dollar global
organization. The World Economic Forum named Benioff as one of its Young Global
Leaders, and in 2007 the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented
Benioff with the coveted Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award.