Salesforce.com Positioned as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, 2012, published July 18, 2012.

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Comments on the News:

• "The social revolution has changed the way people engage customers and prospects, and ultimately the sales process," said Linda Crawford, senior vice president and general manager, Sales Cloud, salesforce.com. "With the Sales Cloud, companies can place customers and prospects at the heart of the sales process and gain deeper insight to win more deals."

According to the report, "Leaders demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help top sales executives achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated, solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and the APAC region in a wide variety of vertical industries, with multiple proof points above 500 users. Leaders are often what other providers in the market measure themselves against."

Sales Cloud, the World's Leading Sales App Built for the Social Era

Salesforce.com is helping businesses embrace the power of the social enterprise by delivering innovative social and mobile cloud technologies that allow companies to engage with their customers and colleagues in entirely new ways. With the Sales Cloud, customers can leverage social intelligence from popular social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube to sell more effectively.  Salesforce Chatter, the leading enterprise social network, lets reps tap into the wisdom of the employee community to immediately harness the resources they need to close deals. And with Salesforce Mobile, reps can drive deals faster, anywhere, from any mobile device.

According to a recent customer survey, Sales Cloud customers experienced a 32 percent average increase in sales productivity, a 30 percent average increase in social leads and a 27 percent average increase in revenue. Among mobile users, customers are also seeing a 28 percent average increase in team productivity and an average 23 percent decrease in sales cycles.[1]

Recent Momentum for Salesforce CRM (Sales Cloud and Service Cloud):

• For access to a complimentary copy of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, 2012, please visit: http://bit.ly/GartnerSFAMQ_Salesforce
• This positioning by Gartner follows salesforce.com's recognition as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers, 2012, (G00228462).
• Salesforce.com, including the Sales Cloud, was just announced in CRM magazine's August 2012 edition as the winner of the 2012 Market Leader Awards for the Enterprise Suite CRM, Midmarket Suite CRM, and Sales Force Automation categories.
• Salesforce Service Cloud was recently recognized as a winner of two CRM magazine 2012 Service Leader Awards in the Customer Case Management and Web Support categories.
• Salesforce.com customers Symantec Corporation and Corel were among the winners of the 2012 Gartner & 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards in the customer service category.
• Corel and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, also a salesforce.com customer, were recently named winners of the 2012 CRM Service Elite Awards by CRM magazine.

Follow @Salesforce on Twitter and Suggested Tweet:

If you'd like to tweet about the Sales Cloud's leadership position in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, 2012, here is a suggested tweet to send to your followers:

• Click to tweet: .@Salesforce Sales Cloud positioned as a Leader in the @Gartner_inc Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation 2012! http://bit.ly/MuXCsV

Additional Resources:

• Like the Sales Cloud on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SalesCloud
• To see a demo of the Sales Cloud, visit: http://www.facebook.com/SalesCloud/app_202355726525588
• For more information about the Sales Cloud, visit: http://www.salesforce.com/sales-cloud/overview/

About the Magic Quadrant:

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Salesforce.com:

With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at the heart of their business. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's platform and application services allow customers to:

• Create employee social networks with Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Rypple and Salesforce Force.com.
• Develop customer social networks with the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Data.com, Salesforce Service Cloud, and Salesforce Site.com.
• Connect with customers on public social networks with Salesforce Heroku and Salesforce Radian6.
• Empower small business to become social enterprises with Salesforce Desk.com and Salesforce Do.com.
• Extend a company's social enterprise with apps from the leading enterprise app marketplace, AppExchange.
• Run apps on Database.com, the first social enterprise database.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

[1] Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Survey dated March 2012, by an independent third-party, MarketTools Inc., on more than 5,500 customers randomly selected. Percentages based on each customer's unique usage of the Sales Cloud and mobile.    

SOURCE Salesforce.com