Salesforce Customer and Partner Momentum Accelerates in France, Creates Positive Impact on French Economy

PARIS, June 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- SALESFORCE WORLD TOUR PARIS — Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today demonstrated that its customer and partner momentum is positively impacting the French economy. Salesforce also announced it has opened a second French R&D center in its headquarters in Paris and signed a definitive agreement to acquire Paris-based Kerensen Consulting, a leading cloud consulting firm in Europe. The announcements were made at Salesforce World Tour Paris with more than 9,000 registered attendees. Tune in to watch the keynote live on 25 June at 10:00 a.m. CET.

Comments on the News:

• "Salesforce continues to increase its investments in France by opening its second French R&D center and signing a definitive agreement to acquire Paris-based Kerensen Consulting," said Olivier Derrien, senior vice president, France and Southern Europe, Salesforce. "In addition, the Salesforce ecosystem of customers, partners and developers across France continues to grow, and IDC forecasts it will drive €3.3 billion of GDP impact and nearly 20,000 jobs across France by 2018. We are thrilled that our commitment to customer success in France is not only driving our own growth locally, but having a positive impact on the broader French economy."
• "With Salesforce, we are placing the customer at the heart of our strategy and will further develop our railway stations. Salesforce shares our vision, and as a technological partner we expect them to accompany us as we innovate in the years to come," said says Olivier Beaurepaire, CIO, SNCF Gares & Connexions. "Thanks to the agility, fast deployment times and scalability of Salesforce products, we have embraced a new way to develop enterprise apps, and with Salesforce, we are able to go beyond a simple digital transformation of the company."
• "France is investing €450 million to implement the roll-out of the national digital economy and the City of Paris has also been engaged in a genuine policy of supporting digital policy," said Muriel Pénicaud, CEO of Business France. "It's an honor for us to see Salesforce, an iconic player in this sector, decide to create its second center of R&D in the city of Paris, thus contributing to its development as the world capital of innovation."

Salesforce Opens Second R&D Center in France
Salesforce is reinforcing its commitment to France with the opening of a second French R&D center located in its Paris headquarters. The company's first French R&D center was opened in Grenoble in 2013. The new Paris R&D center team will work closely with Salesforce's global R&D teams to drive new innovations across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform and create enhanced search and integration capabilities.

Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Kerensen Consulting
Furthering its investment in France and Europe, Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kerensen Consulting, a leading cloud consulting firm in Europe. Based in Paris, Kerensen Consulting has helped hundreds of Europe's largest enterprises move to the cloud. The company provides business consulting, cloud solution management and digital customer experience services to help European companies transform their businesses through the power of cloud, social, mobile and data science using the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Upon the close of the transaction, Kerensen's talented team of consultants will expand Salesforce's Advisory Services capabilities in Europe to enable greater customer success.

Salesforce Ecosystem Powering the New Digital Economy
The Salesforce ecosystem of customers, partners and developers is thriving, and IDC forecasts it will drive €3.3 billion of GDP impact and nearly 20,000 jobs across France by 2018.^[1] One of the key drivers of this growth is the Salesforce AppExchange—the world's leading enterprise apps marketplace. From expense management to ERP, the AppExchange is the world's largest ecosystem of social, mobile and connected enterprise apps with more than 2,700 apps available to test-drive and install on any device. To date, more than three million AppExchange apps have been installed.

Innovative businesses in France are building apps on the Salesforce1 Platform, the world's #1 enterprise cloud platform, and distributing the apps on the Salesforce AppExchange.

• Crosstalent: Crosstalent is an HR app that allows companies to manage every aspect of HR from a mobile device including talent management, HR business intelligence, people management and redeployment.
• Docapost: A subsidiary of the group La Poste, the French mail company, Docapost provides a mobile solution, Signea, which enables the delivery of electronic signature and services. Signea's users are able to certify identification, capture consent and ensure signature—all on a secure system. 
• Geoconcept: Opti-Time Cloud by Geoconcept enables decision-makers and operational staff to access powerful geo-optimization features including whereabouts of the client portfolio, tour optimization and geo-planning of sales and field service appointments.
• Momindum: MyCorpTV is a social app developed by Momindum that enables users to create and share high-quality video presentations.
• Vocalcom: Vocalcom is a call center telephony app, fully integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud, which offers call centre agents a complete view of the customer, allowing agents to effortlessly deliver better and faster service.

Salesforce Customers Leverage the Customer Success Platform to Drive Growth
Leading French brands including MeilleursAgents, Petzl and Piper Heidsieck are all leveraging the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to connect with their customers in entirely new ways: 

• MeilleursAgents: MeilleursAgents is the leading Internet-based real estate company in France. The company's mission is to provide the best information to all individuals who are working on a real estate project, sale or purchase. MeilleursAgents plans to increase the number of independent agencies they work with by 30 percent in the coming year, and uses Salesforce Sales Cloud together with Salesforce Pardot to manage its increased scale.
• Petzl: This famous French manufacturer of climbing gear, caving gear, work-at-height equipment and headlamps is using the Sales Cloud to manage its distributor and supplier relationships. In addition, the company has built its multilingual product database and website on the Salesforce1 Platform.
• Piper Heidsieck: This champagne winery founded in 1785 has chosen the Sales Cloud to connect more closely with their retailers and buyers, and to ensure that they can provide 1-to-1 customer journeys for their industry influencers.

In addition, today Salesforce also announced that the Salesforce Analytics Cloud will be available in French on July 15, 2015. As the digital economy in France continues to grow, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud will empower French companies of all sizes to surface insights from data so they can know their customers like never before and take data-driven actions that invigorate their businesses.

Integrated Philanthropy at Salesforce World Tour Supports CoderDojo
Salesforce has a long history of giving technology, financial resources and employee time to nonprofits through its 1-1-1 model of integrated corporate philanthropy. Since the Salesforce Foundation's inception in 1999, Salesforce technology has powered more than 25,000 nonprofit and higher education institutions; the Foundation has provided more than $85 million in grants and Salesforce employees have logged more than 920,000 volunteer hours globally.

In keeping with this model, the Salesforce Foundation has announced that it has given a $200,000 global grant to CoderDojo to support the running of free volunteer-led coding clubs for children and young people. This donation will support 14 Dojos, each run by Salesforce "champions," and will establish 70 Salesforce Dojo certified employees as mentors. The Salesforce-supported Dojos will reach 420 youths and has a goal to reach as many girls as boys in each session. CoderDojo will establish Dojos throughout Europe, including France, and have a presence in the Developer Zone at Salesforce World Tour Paris, where Dojo pupils will demonstrate their projects.

Salesforce World Tour Paris
Salesforce World Tour Paris will host more than 9,000 registered attendees at Parc des Expositions, Porte de Versailles a Paris. The event will bring together Salesforce experts, partners and customers to demonstrate how companies of all sizes and industries are leveraging the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to succeed with their customers in a whole new way. Through the keynote from Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and inspiring customer stories from marquee customers such as MeilleursAgents, Petzl, Piper Heidsieck and SNCF, attendees will learn how Salesforce empowers them to connect all of their apps, devices and customer data in today's cloud, social, mobile and data science world.

Additional Information:

• Registration link: salesforce.com/paris
• SalesforceLive!: salesforce.com/fr/live/

Connect with Salesforce in France:

• Like Salesforce on Facebook: facebook.com/salesforcefrance
• Read the Salesforce blog: blogs.salesforce.com/fr/
• Follow @salesforce on Twitter: twitter.com/SalesforceFR

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit www.salesforce.com.

© 2015 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, AppExchange, Salesforce Platform, and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. Other brands featured herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

^[1] Source: Preliminary data, Salesforce-sponsored IDC white paper, "The Impact of the Salesforce Economy," June 2015

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SOURCE Salesforce

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