ITN Source Maximizes Sales Productivity Using Salesforce SFA and AppExchange

SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that ITN Source is maximizing sales productivity using Salesforce SFA. One of the world's largest and most respected providers of moving image content deployed the leading on demand customer relationship management (CRM) solution to 80 staff in seven countries in three months -- on time and on budget. By unifying customer information, ITN Source is maximizing sales efficiency and effectiveness, and enhancing satisfaction among program makers, advertising agencies, education authorities, and corporate customers worldwide.

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ITN Source is one of the 22,700 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that is a part of the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2006. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

Commenting on the deployment of Salesforce SFA, Sue Thexton, Managing Director, ITN Source, says, "Salesforce is making a real difference to what we know about our customers. For every member of staff, it is now significantly quicker and easier to produce quotations, record research results, place and track orders, manage the production process, and track shipments. The management team can now accurately analyze real-time reports on sales enquiries, orders, fulfillment, and financials. And our marketing team is able to concentrate efforts on the right customer segments and target audiences."

The explosion in multimedia broadcasting has led to a significant growth in demand for archive material worldwide. Until recently, ITN Source was using a rudimentary solution to receive, track, and manage customer orders. But with archive demand now growing at a rate of up to 40 percent annually, the company realized the solution lacked the scalability and functionality needed to manage an increasing volume of sales opportunities. As ITN Source expanded into more international territories and acquired more customers, it needed a new sales management system which was flexible, easy to use, and quick and cost-effective to deploy.

ITN Source has deployed Salesforce.com's flagship sales force automation (SFA) application to 80 sales professionals worldwide to create a single, comprehensive view of each and every sales contact, including their profile, archive purchase history and relationship with ITN Source. When a customer contacts the company to request archive material -- using their preferred channel of communication -- all of the details concerning the order are recorded in Salesforce. This can be shared among all the relevant members of staff to ensure the order is properly managed, processed, delivered and invoiced according to the customer's needs.

Personalized dashboards provide comprehensive management reporting and analytic insight into any situation, from revenue forecasts and demand for particular archives, to customers' trends and buying behavior. The system is being used by ITN Source's marketing team to create, manage, execute, and analyze the results of multichannel marketing campaigns -- all geared towards maximizing demand for the broadcast materials. And ITN Source has taken advantage of the quick and simple customization functionality in AppExchange Builder to adapt the system to its unique and diverse needs.

"We had a deadline to deploy the end-to-end sales management system worldwide in only three months -- and for that reason we shied away from a complex, time-consuming, on-premise CRM solution," says Thexton. "Salesforce.com offers us unrivalled functionality and flexibility, it requires minimal technical support, and it is incredibly straightforward to use. Salesforce.com also demonstrated a passionate desire to win our business; they were responsive and commercially flexible."

About ITN Source

ITN Source (formerly ITN Archive) is one of the world's largest and most respected providers of moving image content, housing over 700,000 hours of footage across a diverse range of collections including historical footage, iconic images, music, entertainment programmes, natural history and film. With hours of material added everyday, ITN Source is the world's fastest growing video archive business, containing defining moments and images captured over three centuries. ITN Source represents the footage of ITN, Channel 4, Granada, British Pathe, Reuters, Fox News and Fox Movietone and other specialist collections. ITN Source recently signed a unique partnership deal with Google to supply video content to its innovative Video Store. With headquarters in London, ITN Source has sales offices across the globe in New York, Los Angeles, Canada, Berlin, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.itnsource.com/ .

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com's on-demand platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications quickly and easily, customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their unique business needs, and distribute and sell on-demand apps at http://www.appexchange.com/ . Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com's world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.

As of April 30, 2006, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 22,700 customers and approximately 444,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust. 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://www.salesforce.com/ , or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

NOTE: Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and AppExchange and Successforce are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.