FinancialForce.com Gains Momentum With Professional Services Organizations as Firms Augment Salesforce CRM Investments

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - Aug 25, 2011) - FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today reported that it continues to experience strong customer success in the professional services market. FinancialForce.com's success follows research that shows professional services organizations (PSOs) are increasingly moving to cloud solutions to better manage the full spectrum of people, projects, customers and financials.

Some of the PSOs that have selected FinancialForce.com solutions include Centerstance, Inc., Chi Solutions, Convio, HumanConcepts, IMS Health, Maxwell Systems, NAV Canada, Perceptive Software, Quattro Innovation Group, Sysnet, The Compliance Company Inc, Universal Mind, and Voxclever.

The $1.4 trillion professional services market is one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy. To address the rapid industry growth, services firms are rapidly adopting cloud solutions to address different parts of their operations. Salesforce CRM is now the most dominant front office solution in the industry, currently in use at one third of PSOs according to Service Performance Insight Research (SPI).

"A high percentage of Salesforce CRM users sell services," said Jeremy Roche, CEO and president of FinancialForce.com. "Now this large group of users is extending their CRM applications to include professional services automation and online accounting to improve utilization and increase efficiency. PSOs can eliminate departmental barriers and create a more collaborative environment centered on their customers. We are experiencing rapid growth in this industry because PSOs recognize the value of running sales, services and finance applications all on the Force.com cloud."

Earlier this year, FinancialForce.com enhanced its offerings for professional service organizations by launching FinancialForce PSA, a cloud based solution that leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com to the benefit of services organizations. It enables PSOs to manage their people, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. FinancialForce SRP is the first complete Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution built entirely on Force.com. Combining Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA, and FinancialForce Accounting, the solution helps PSOs sell, deliver and bill projects collaboratively and overcome the obstacles found in a siloed or fragmented systems approach.

"I had a notion that having our entire internal enterprise systems native to the Force.com platform would be more effective and efficient. Now I realize that initially I underestimated the resulting benefits and positive outcomes by several orders of magnitude," said Greg Lueck, managing partner at Centerstance. "It is so powerful to be able to track all of our business from accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities through closed-won sales to the delivery and completion of the project, to the final billing on one platform with one interface using one data repository. I just can't imagine going back to the 'old school' way."

"The big challenge company-wide was that marketing, sales and professional services didn't have a 360 degree view of our customer," said Patrick Kearney, vice president, professional services, Perceptive Software. "With FinancialForce.com, Perceptive now has an up-to-date view on where we are at with our key performance metrics. Not only are we more efficient, but we're more effectively scheduling our team members. Having access to real-time data allows us to balance work load and work assignments to ensure that the right people are assigned to the right projects. This leads to higher customer and employee satisfaction."

"FinancialForce PSA has helped HumanConcepts move our professional services organization from a country-specific team to a global team," said Peter Robson, professional services manager at HumanConcepts. "Many features, such as time-tracking, billing, and project notes are helping us to effectively communicate the current project status to the executive team, track project budgets, and keep our sales team aware of progress and issues encountered. The next step is using FinancialForce PSA to help us manage resource allocation based on current utilization and upcoming sales opportunities!"

Learn More at Dreamforce '11
At Dreamforce '11, SPI will reveal findings of a new in-depth benchmarking study of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry. FinancialForce.com co-sponsored the research.

What: "Are You Selling Services? Learn How to Sell, Deliver and Bill More on Force.com"
Where: Dreamforce '11, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Golden Gate C2
When: Wednesday, August 31, 3:30--4:30 p.m.

About FinancialForce.com
FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building online business applications for Force.com, the world's leading enterprise cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

To learn more please visit www.FinancialForce.com.