Salesforce adds on-demand to CRM tools

SAN FRANCISCO--Salesforce.com introduced the latest update to its hosted customer relationship management package on Tuesday, with a focus on increasing customization and integration capabilities throughout its applications.

The San Francisco-based applications service provider said the new release, Salesforce.com Winter '05, will go live Nov. 15, becoming immediately available to all of the company's existing subscribers. Salesforce sells monthly licenses for its Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) applications, which businesses use to help manage operations such as sales force and marketing automation.

The Winter '05 release includes a new program, CustomForce, that lets companies change the user interface, business reports and workflow of Salesforce?s customer information systems to their liking. Companies can also customize tabs, layouts, fields and access controls for the software.

CustomForce can build new applications to handle, for instance, recruiting, information technology and public relations.

Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff discussed the new program at his company's user conference in San Francisco, where 2,000 people converged to hear about the latest developments from the company.

Benioff contrasted Salesforce's approach to business systems to those of such rivals as Siebel Systems and SAP. Since most companies find packaged applications lacking in some way, software suppliers often create different versions for certain industries, such as high-tech, for a better match.

"Cisco Systems doesn't want the high-tech version," Benioff said. "They want the Cisco version. They want the edition that's exactly for them. That's what CustomForce is all about. That is our strategic direction."

CustomForce is available at no extra charge to users of Salesforce's pay-by-the-month programs.

The company said the Winter '05 release will enhance its subscribers' abilities to create new software tools that draw on data already contained in its systems. The customization package is individually known as Customforce.com and will be made available to the company's existing Salesforce.com and Supportforce.com customers at no additional cost. Supportforce is the company's customer service management application.

The company said the new release also features across-the-board upgrades to its core CRM package, Salesforce, as well as Supportforce and its Sforce product line of Web services and