Salesforce.com has announced that Carlson 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 leveraged the Force.com platform and AppExchange to easily
develop a customized 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 recognized as the service is
delivered.

  “We had built a global enterprise, but did not have the tools necessary
to utilize 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 customized applications for each of the five operating
groups using the solution. In addition, AppExchange provided an easy way to
add additional functionality and packaged customizations 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 maximize 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.”
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