Salesforce Inks Hotel Group

Salesforce.com, the San Francisco-based online customer relationship management (CRM), ASP, today announced that Le Meridien, the luxury hotel group, has chosen salesforce.com’s global CRM solution to help its international sales team, manage relations with clients across 55 countries.

Salesforce.com says an important function of Le Meridien’s new CRM solution will be to support the management of business from region to region, as well as provide central oversight of the global business.

“We are introducing salesforce.com for two main reasons. The first is to improve the management of our customer relationships through the 200 strong sales team around the world, and the second is to help us drive revenue,” said John Ryan, Le Meridien’s senior vice president, worldwide sales.

“We decided on salesforce.com because they offer a cost effective solution and speed of implementation.”

“This is a strategically important win for salesforce.com. This deal demonstrates the increasing acceptance of the Web services model by large global organizations who have previously chosen conventional software solutions,”

Says Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “The benefits of an online CRM solution — rapid, low-risk implementation, ease of use and access, cost-effectiveness — are often most dramatic during global deployments, and we look forward to supporting Le Meridien in its growth and customer service goals.”