Avid joins Salesforce CRM roster

Avid, a producer of digital audio and video technology, is in the process of implementing Salesforce CRM across all customer-facing operations in an effort to get a better understanding of its customer base.

Salesforce was chosen as the company's global CRM system following a formal evaluation and review process. Before Salesforce, Avid had used a number of different CRM systems — including Salesforce tools — in certain divisions of the company. With a single system now in place, Avid executives hope to improve customer-facing functions, automate business processes and keep business processes and data consistent.

“Our goals with the new system are to enable a 360 degree view of our customers, automation of business process, improved forecasting and improved productivity,” summed up Jerry Kelly, VP and CIO for Avid. “Salesforce was chosen for a number of reasons: We liked its support for industry best practices and its speed and ease of deployment. It is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application with sufficient scalability to support Avid. It is also easy to integrate with Avid's back office application and other industry-leading SaaS solutions to support our customers and customer facing personnel.”

Implementation of Salesforce CRM began six weeks ago, as part of Avid's Customer Success initiative. Further Salesforce releases are planned through early 2010.

Avid has also tapped Xactly SaaS to help manage its sales compensation system. Xactly was chosen partly because it integrates well with Salesforce CRM.