Salesforce.com 2011 Annual Report Download - page 13

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Our Strategy
Our objective is to be the leading provider of CRM application services. We also want to be the leading
cloud computing platform on which our customers and partners build applications.
Key elements of our strategy include:
•Strengthening our existing CRM applications and extending into new functional areas within CRM. We
designed our service to easily accommodate new features and functions. We intend to continue to add
CRM features and functionality to our core service that we will make available to customers at no
additional charge. We offer advanced editions for an additional subscription fee to customers that
require enhanced CRM capabilities. We have a growing portfolio of applications that serve different
customer segments and markets. During fiscal 2011 we acquired several companies in complementary
businesses, joint ventures, services and technologies in an effort to strengthen and extend our service
CRM offerings. We expect to continue to make such investments and acquisitions in the future.
•Pursuing new customers and new territories aggressively. We believe that our cloud application and
platform offerings provide significant value for businesses of any size. As a result, we will continue to
aggressively target businesses of all sizes, primarily through our direct sales force. We have steadily
increased and plan to continue to increase the number of direct sales professionals we employ, and we
intend to develop additional distribution channels for our service. We have created several editions of
our service to address the distinct requirements of businesses of different sizes. We also believe that
there is a substantial market opportunity for our service outside of North America. We plan to continue
to aggressively market to customers outside of North America by recruiting local sales and support
professionals and by building partnerships that help us add customers in these regions.
•Deepening relationships with our existing customer base. We believe there is significant opportunity to
leverage our relationships with existing customers. As the customer realizes the benefits of our service,
we aim to either upgrade our customers to higher priced editions or sell more subscriptions by targeting
additional functional areas and business units within the customer organization and ultimately pursuing
enterprise-wide deployments. We aim to have our customers renew their subscriptions at the end of
their contractual terms and we run customer success and other programs in an effort to secure renewals
of existing customers.
•Continuing to lead the industry transformation to the next phase of cloud computing. We believe that
the market transformation to cloud applications and platforms is a growing trend in the information
technology industry. With the popularity of social networking websites, new ways to communicate and
collaborate based on feeds and status updates have emerged in the enterprise. We believe we have
established a leadership position in the enterprise cloud computing industry as a successful vendor of
CRM application services, an enabler for third parties to create their own cloud applications through
our platform and a developer of cloud computing technologies with social, mobile and open
characteristics to provide to enterprise customers around the world.
•Encouraging the development of third-party applications on our Force.com cloud computing platform.
Our Force.com cloud computing platform enables existing customers, ISVs and third-party developers
to develop and deliver cloud applications they have built in our multi-tenant environment. It is a
platform on which applications can be created, tested, published, and run. In addition, these
applications can be listed on the AppExchange, our online marketplace of cloud applications, or sold
by ISVs. We believe the ecosystem of cloud developers and ISVs will address the business
requirements of both current and potential customers.
The Salesforce CRM Service
Our comprehensive array of services enable customers and subscribers to systematically record, store,
analyze, share, and act upon business data and to help businesses manage customer accounts, track sales leads,
evaluate marketing campaigns, and provide post-sales service. We also enable companies to generate reports and
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