Salesforce.com gets into politics

Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign has raised about $20 million so far in 2007 with the help of  “com-Mitt” software for interacting (fundraising) with donors. The activity is otherwise known as CRM, customer relationship management, and salesforce.com's on demand platform is the foundation of com-Mitt.

Not one to miss a new, and timely, market opportunity, salesforce.com is using the customization concepts developed in com-Mitt to create a new application, CampaignForce, for other individuals and parties on the campaign trail. 

"We first got in touch with the Romney team six or eight months ago," said Dan Burton, senior vice president of global public policy at salesforce.com. "As the fund raising level for Romney illustrates, it's a sophisticated piece of technology."

It's not much of a stretch to see how customizable, on demand CRM software can help in fundraising and volunteer efforts, and would be an improvement over Excel or more heavyweight applications. CampaignForce is expected to be available in the next two months for use by other candidates, the company said.

Salesforce.com is also looking to gain more government customers for its CRM-based applications and Apex development platform. "We have been successful in commercial market," Burton said. "The next big wave is government and [political] campaign management is a piece of that." Many government agencies would be hesitant to store their data in salesforce.com's datacenters, and that objection isn't going away any time soon.