Telstra and salesforce.com in wireless CRM alliance

By Stuart Finlayson

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application developer salesforce.com and telecommunications giant Telstra have joined forces to deliver salesforce.com's CRM applications to customers over Telstra's wireless networks.

Both companies will market the wireless CRM applications, which are aimed largely at organisations with large field sales teams. The applications allow the user to access customer information wirelessly from a handheld device.

Doug Farber, director of international marketing at salesforce.com, says the offering will allow customers to increase their productivity and gauge the performance of their business more accurately.

"Our joint offer allows organisations with large mobile sales forces to greatly improve internal information flow.

"For instance, a sales representative can update his or her central database remotely. This allows the marketing manager to keep track of how much business is coming in and where from. As a result, more revenue opportunities are created, sales efficiencies are increased and customer satisfaction levels are improved."

Telstra business and government mobile sales and solutions managing director, Murray Bergin says the partnership will help drive forward Telstra's strategy to increase adoption of wireless data services among business.

"There is a lot happening in the wireless data space at present. We are seeing a migration of mainstream IT applications into the mobile world. The concept of utility on demand is here and Telstra can jointly deliver truly compelling business applications that provide real commercial value to our customers by teaming up with organisations like salesforce.com.

"We have the high speed networks, devices, and most importantly, the third party applications to meet the increasing demand for services that improve business productivity."

Pricing for the application, which is available now, will start at AUS$100 per user per month plus airtime usage.

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