The Weather Channel Selects Salesforce.com for Online Customer Relationship Management.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 12, 2002

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Salesforce.com, the market leader in online customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that The Weather Channel, the nation's leading weather information provider, has selected salesforce.com's Enterprise Edition to provide a central repository and reporting system for its various sales divisions, including weather.com, advertising, and affiliate sales. By integrating with an email system, a financial system, and an internal contract administration system, the online customer relationship management solution provides The Weather Channel with a real-time, 360-degree customer view, which allows for more strategic selling, better customer service, and increased efficiency company-wide.

Prior to salesforce.com, each sales division used its own distributed contact management solution to track leads and opportunities. Because these systems were disconnected, it was extremely difficult to determine if another sales person was actively pursuing the same account. The distributed environment created a high risk for sending inconsistent messages to the customer or prospect that could potentially damage a relationship.

The Weather Channel chose salesforce.com's comprehensive CRM solution because it could easily integrate with existing applications and thus provide a centralized repository and reporting tool that ultimately delivers a holistic view of the customer and automates the customer relationship management process. With salesforce.com, The Weather Channel can compile and share up-to-the-minute customer information across companies and divisions, easily manage sales and marketing opportunities, generate accurate reports on the fly, and communicate and service customers more effectively from the beginning of the relationship to the closing of the deal to billing and servicing.

"With multiple companies and divisions interfacing with the same customers, The Weather Channel couldn't effectively manage communication with our customers and prospects within a distributed environment," said Vicki Hamilton, vice president of Shared Services and IT Operations at The Weather Channel. "We were pleased to find a sophisticated CRM system that not only offers a 360-degree customer view, but is also extremely easy to use, reasonably priced and delivers immediate results from the first day of implementation. The Weather Channel is confident that salesforce.com will give us the centralized reporting tool we need to provide outstanding service to our customers on an ongoing basis."

Built on a native XML-standard Web Services platform, salesforce.com offers easier integration than conventional software applications. The company has an open and extended architecture, enabling companies such as The Weather Channel to easily and cost-effectively integrate its online CRM solution with other applications such as ERP, HR, data warehouse, and supply chain management systems, regardless of the platform or system environment.

"Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition's advanced integration functionality makes it easy for companies to link systems and processes across the entire organization without the cost and lengthy implementation of conventional CRM applications," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "We are pleased that we are able to provide The Weather Channel with a truly integrated CRM system that enables them to leverage information from existing backend applications to manage and service its customers more effectively."

Salesforce.com currently has more than 4,900 customers for its online CRM solution, including global leaders such as le Meridien, Autodesk, and USA Today. Salesforce.com delivers its CRM solution as an online information utility via a Web Services infrastructure. In the past year, salesforce.com has added more CRM customers than Siebel (NASDAQ: SEBL), PeopleSoft (NASDAQ:PSFT), Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), and SAP (NYSE: SAP) combined.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com builds and delivers enterprise applications as scalable online services. The salesforce.com product suite -- Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Offline Edition -- gives companies 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 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, Dow Jones Newswires, Ericson Microelectronics, Fujitsu, Kikkoman, le Meridien, Paymentech, Putnam Lovell NBF, Siemens PT&D, Textron Fastening Systems, USA Today and Wachovia.

About Weather Channel

The Weather Channel, Inc., based in Atlanta, is the nation's premier provider of weather information. The Weather Channel is seen in more than 84 million homes nationwide. The Weather Channel is owned by Landmark Communications, Inc., a Norfolk, Va.-based privately held media company with global interests.