Salesforce.com Acquires InStranet

Salesforce.com, a player in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) space, has announced the acquisition of InStranet, a provider of knowledge management technology for business to consumer (B2C) call centres. The acquisition brings knowledge base Dimensions technology to Salesforce CRM customer service and support, enabling customers and call centre agents around the world to quickly find the answer they need, the first time. The addition of this technology and approximately 350,000 global call centre agents will accelerate the momentum of Salesforce CRM customer service and support in the growing customer service and support market.

“I’d like to welcome the InStranet team to salesforce.com,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. “We’re excited to add their technology to our SaaS applications and Force.com platform. Not only will it make our service and support offering stronger for our customers and further their success, but it will help catapult our growth in the customer service and support space.”

Aaron Katz, area vice president, Corporate Sales, Asia Pacific, Salesforce.com said, “This acquisition presents a vast opportunity for us in India given the booming BPO industry. Call centres in India will move to the next level in providing customer service, in terms of being more efficient, with Instranet’s critical knowledge management technology to support them. Finally, call centre operatives will have access to a knowledge base that gives them the answers they need and none of the background ’noise’ they don’t.”

“Delivering our technology as a service had become a key focus for us due to strong interest from our customers,” said Alex Dayon, founder and CEO of InStranet. “This is an exciting opportunity for all of us at InStranet, and will be a huge leap forward for the SaaS market.”

InStranet has solved the customer service and support challenge by taking a different approach to knowledge base management through its Dimensions technology, which adds the customer’s context, such as product or geography, to the knowledge base to quickly hone in on the right solution and eliminate irrelevant search results. This technology provides call centre agents with accurate answers to customer questions and improves customers’ Web-based self-service experience, thus, reducing the number of calls to call centre agents by frustrated customers.