13.6.07

KONE Chooses Salesforce.com for 2,560 Staff in 43 Countries


Salesforce.com continues to see tremendous traction within the European market
SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that KONE, one of the world's leading elevator and escalator companies, is expanding their deployment of Salesforce's multi-tenant, on- demand CRM to 2,560 staff in 43 countries to maximize sales effectiveness and efficiency and help the company to deepen its customer focus. Utilizing the Salesforce Platform, KONE is customizing the application and developing a seamless integration with the company's SAP back-office environment, which will further accelerate the value of the implementation.

As previously announced, salesforce.com revenues in Europe for the quarter ended April 30, 2007 were up 71% from the same quarter a year ago. All of these customers, including KONE, are part of the 32,300 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2007. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

"When we reach the go-live date in all the territories, KONE will be uniquely positioned to increase the volume of sales per sales person, significantly reduce the burden of administration, and streamline and accelerate the decision-making process," said Toby Fox, Assistant Vice President for Project and Application Delivery, KONE. "One of the great advantages of Salesforce is that it will integrate seamlessly with our SAP back office and scale to multiple time-zones, geographies and currencies."

With the elevator and escalator market moving towards a commodity model, KONE needed to distinguish itself by deepening relationships with its customers. After a five-year total cost of ownership study, usability reviews and time to value evaluation was completed, KONE was convinced that salesforce.com was the right choice.

Following pilot deployments in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Ireland, KONE will implement Salesforce in a further 40 countries and in 12 languages. Leveraging Salesforce Connect, all customer, escalator and elevator equipment -- and contract information -- is currently being integrated with Salesforce, and the prospect tendering system, orders and customer billing data will be integrated shortly. By year-end, the Web-based automated lead management system will also be integrated, offering true end-to-end, web-to-leads functionality. In addition, the Salesforce Platform has enabled the business team to create its own customized tabs, fields, layouts and workflow themselves, with minimal support either from the salesforce.com Professional Services team involved on the overall program, or from KONE's own internal IT department.

About KONE

KONE is one of the world's leading elevator and escalator companies. It provides customers with industry-leading elevators and escalators and innovative solutions for their maintenance and modernization. KONE also provides maintenance of automatic building doors. In 2005, KONE had annual net sales of euro 3.2 billion and approximately 27,000 employees.

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