Easter Seals Reaches Out Locally with Help from Salesforce.com

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Easter Seals Reaches Out Locally with Help from Salesforce.com

Large non-profit disability organization uses donated customer service application to streamline communication between national headquarters and scores of local organizations across the country

January 6, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – January 6, 2003 – Salesforce.com, the market leader in online customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Easter Seals, Inc. has qualified for a second year of free use of the salesforce.com online CRM service. Seeking to better assist a nationwide network of 90 affiliates in the quick and efficient implementation of national initiatives, Easter Seals is using salesforce.com's Sales Force Automation and Customer Service & Support applications to log local affiliate progress, communicate real-time with other project managers, address issues quickly and report on progress. The innovation of treating grassroots local affiliates as customers of the national organization, supported by salesforce.com's donation, is already showing substantial benefit as Easter Seals furthers its nationwide Web initiative.

"By using salesforce.com, the national organization is able to devote full and immediate attention to each of the 90 affiliates on nationwide initiatives such as the development of a co-branded Web presence where affiliates market their own message within the national parameters," said Janine Stines, support manager at the Easter Seals national office. "We have streamlined communication so that all concerns are quickly resolved, no issue falls through the cracks and we can strategically assign resources across the national organization rather than putting out fires scattershot."

"Like many of our customers, Easter Seals is a large, organization that must consolidate information from multiple geographies and offices," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "But Easter Seals differs in approaching CRM as a means to better serve a variety of local communities. By coordinating the grassroots actions of its local affiliates, Easter Seals demonstrates the value of salesforce.com for global non-profits beyond obvious applications like fundraising."

Easter Seals assists more than one million children and adults with disabilities and their families annually through a nationwide network of 90 affiliates and 13,000 staff members and thousands of volunteers. Easter Seals has spearheaded an effort to ensure all of its affiliates are online, maintaining their own web sites and website content to promote and manage local services. The national office uses salesforce.com's various applications to manage hundreds of contacts at these affiliates and report on their website development progress.

Centrally housing this disseminated information enables the national office to help launch ten new affiliate websites every couple of months with consistent identity and presentation as an umbrella to each affiliate's unique local style and brand. Headquarters is able to ensure that no call or inquiry from any of the 90 affiliates is lost or ignored, and stay on top of critical issues through standard and custom reports. With this centralized area of correspondence, reporting and case management, Easter Seals can now move towards salesforce.com's powerful Web-to-cases and Web-to-leads functionality to further automate contact between the national organization and each local center or its vendors.

Salesforce.com offers free use of its application worldwide for up to 10 users of each of the first 100 qualified nonprofit organizations to sign up. Nonprofits must be registered in the U.S. with the IRS as a 501c3 charity, or outside of the U.S. as an NGO, and have a charitable purpose to meet minimum eligibility requirements. The program is aligned with the salesforce.com/foundation's goals of creating a new model to integrate business and the community to create social change in part by donating 1% of its profits to the community. Nonprofits interested in finding out more information about this program and costs for services not covered in this program should log onto www.salesforce.com and follow the steps for nonprofits within the 30-Day Trial or should call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com builds and delivers customer relationship management (CRM) applications as scalable online services. The salesforce.com product suite - Team Edition, Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, Wireless Edition and Offline Edition - gives companies of all sizes a complete 360-degree view of the customer. The company's award-winning CRM solutions provide integrated online sales force automation, customer service and support management, and marketing automation applications to help companies meet the complex challenges of global customer communication. Salesforce.com has received considerable recognition in the industry, including Editors' Choice and two Five-Star ratings from PC Magazine, two Deploy Awards from InfoWorld, Red Herring 100, Upside Hot 100, Investor's Choice Award from Enterprise Outlook, Editor's Choice from TMCLabs, Top 10 CRM Implementation from Aberdeen Group and InfoWorld's 2001 CRM Technology of the Year. Founded in 1999, salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia. Salesforce.com customers include Autodesk, Arvato Services, Dow Jones Newswires, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Kikkoman Corporation, Le Meridien, Paymentech, PMI Mortgage Insurance, Putnam Lovell NBF, Siemens PT&D, Suntory Foods, Textron Fastening Systems, USA Today and Wachovia.

About salesforce.com/foundation

Salesforce.com/foundation is the leader in integrating philanthropy and business. Through its model of donating 1% of profits to the community annually, 1% of salesforce.com equity to its programs and 1% of employee working hours to community service, it is building a new model for corporations to better serve the communities in which they operate. The Foundation also strives to better the lives of youth by providing relevant access to technology for youth in underserved communities both domestically and abroad. The Foundation works with other corporations, youth development agencies, and NGOs to create a society in which children, regardless of socio-economic background, ethnicity or learning level, have access to technology and understand how to use it to enhance their lives. More information is available at http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/.

About Easter Seals

For more than 80 years, Easter Seals has been providing services that help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence. Its primary services - medical rehabilitation, job training and employment, inclusive child care, adult day services, and camping and recreation - benefit more than one million individuals with disabilities and their families each year through one of 450 centers nationwide.

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