Salesforce.com wins $100m+ megadeal

Salesforce.com has won its largest ever contract, worth at least $100 million, with a large insurance provider, CEO Mark Benioff has revealed.

"I’m thrilled to announce that since the closing of the fourth quarter [on 31st January], we’ve already topped ourselves by signing our first ever nine-figure transaction in the opening days of Q1," he said on a conference call with investment analysts.

"I just want to let everyone know how excited we are about the transaction and it’s with […] a very large insurance company, and we couldn’t be more excited about this."

Benioff made the announcement as he unveiled the company’s latest financial figures. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Salesforce.com’s quarterly revenue grew 38% year-on-year to $632 million. The company made a $4.0 million net loss, however, compared to a $10.9 million net income in the final quarter of the last year.

For the full year, it grew revenue by 37% to $2.3 billion, but swung to an $11.5 million net loss compared to last year’s $69.7 million net income.

Benioff credited the company’s continued growth to its social enterprise strategy, which is based on functionality such as internal social networking tool Chatter and social media monitoring system Radian 6. The company does not break out sales figures for its various products, however.

Companies that have adopted the social enterprise approach, Benioff said, include Hewlett-Packard, with whom Salesforce.com signed its largest deal of the most recent quarter, and Time Warner Cable. "[T]heir vision is to build an employee social network with sales and support reps that provides realtime customer insights on mobile devices, fueling a new level of collaboration with customers," he said.

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Ben Rossi

Ben was Vitesse Media's editorial director, leading content creation and editorial strategy across all Vitesse products, including its market-leading B2B and consumer magazines, websites, research and...

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