SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that the fifth largest pizza chain in the country is using Salesforce to increase the success of its expanding franchise business. Using the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service, Papa Murphy's International developed and deployed a highly customized solution that allows it to track and manage franchisor information from initial inquiries to contract signing, through site construction and on an ongoing basis for store operations. Salesforce.com partner CenterStance helped deploy the solution for Papa Murphy's.

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Papa Murphy's is one of the 43,600 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2008. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

Papa Murphy's was able to customize and implement their Salesforce CRM applications very rapidly, including Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Marketing, Salesforce Customer Portal and Salesforce Mobile for its franchise sales staff. In addition, Papa Murphy's is using Force.com to customize Salesforce and tapped into the AppExchange to add additional functionality including Salesforce for Google Adwords. Finally, after a short training session, the company found users were quite comfortable with Salesforce and eager to use it and adoption has already exceeded expectations.

"We have a very mobile workforce, and we needed a way for them to capture, access, and use information to increase the success of both our company and our franchisees," said Brian Fisher, director of business technology at Papa Murphy's. "Salesforce gave us exactly what we needed, since we could leverage existing features and also tailor the solution for our particular business. Our staff especially enjoys the ability to access Salesforce from their Blackberries, which eliminates the need to start up their computers constantly while on the road."

With this proven success for its franchise sales team, the company next rolled out Salesforce to its construction group and operations team. It took less than three months to design, implement and train employees on the custom objects, forms, applications and processes that have streamlined their internal operations. Fisher estimates that with other technology options available to his team, this project would have taken at least a year to rollout. He was truly impressed with the time saved on development and staff training. Now Papa Murphy's has a single, centralized location in which to manage all aspects of its franchise business.

Papa Murphy's is also using Salesforce Customer Portal for its internal help desk needs. Emails sent to the help desk automatically create a case, and the IT team can use Salesforce to assign resources and track the issue to resolution.

"Salesforce is so easy to use, and requires so little IT support, that we've tapped it for all aspects of our business, both internally and externally," added Fisher. "We've increased productivity and improved communications, and now have a highly efficient way to manage the growth of our franchise business. Salesforce is proving to be instrumental to our ongoing success."

About Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy's is the fifth-largest pizza chain in the country and the pioneer of the Take 'N' Bake pizza concept. Papa Murphy's operates over 1,000 locations in 30 states and Canada. The Vancouver, Wash.-based company offers custom-made pizzas featuring high-quality fresh toppings generously layered on pizza dough that is made fresh each morning in each store. Papa Murphy's pizzas are baked at home in customers' ovens for a piping hot, delicious meal whenever they want it. In addition to handmade pizzas, the company offers a growing menu of Take 'N' Bake items, including cheesy bread, lasagna, chocolate chip cookie dough and freshly-made salads. Papa Murphy's has been voted "Best Pizza Chain in America" for five consecutive years by consumers nationwide in the Restaurants and Institutions "Consumers' Choice in Chains" survey. For more information, visit http://www.papamurphys.com/.

Force.com Platform and the AppExchange

Force.com reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.

The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing thousands of applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM application, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

As of April 30, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 43,600 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com/, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Copyright (c) 2008 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Katy Dormer of salesforce.com, +1-415-901-8595,
kdormer@salesforce.com

Web site: http://www.salesforce.com/
http://www.papamurphys.com/

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