Salesforce.com aims for CRM big league

Salesforce.com chairman Marc Benioff has pledged to target larger businesses with his company's customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Speaking at the launch of Customforce 2.0, a customisation toolkit, Benioff said that, while the bulk of his company's clients were small and medium-sized businesses, this would be changing.

His statement was helped by the news that Merrill Lynch has just signed up 5,000 staff to Customforce 2.0, representing Salesforce.com's largest ever deal.

"A water company supplies its product to small and large consumers alike," said Benioff. "There is no reason why we cannot provide a computing utility service to all too."

According to figures released yesterday by analyst firm Nucleus Research, 93 per cent of Salesforce.com customers have fewer than 500 users. The firm predicts that large companies will adopt the CRM system, but only at a local or branch level.

Meanwhile John Freeland, executive vice president at Accenture CRM, said that his firm is building closer ties to Salesforce.com in light of larger clients' interest in the system.

"We saw Salesforce.com as something for the middle market, but it's been amazing to us how quickly larger companies took it up," he said.