SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that the Chicago Housing Authority, which is leading the City's program to rebuild and modernize the nation's third-largest public housing system, has chosen salesforce.com to enable case managers to track residents, support self-sufficiency and facilitate relocation. The Chicago Housing Authority retained Model Metrics LLC, a key salesforce.com implementation partner based in Chicago, to leverage the AppExchange platform to develop customized on-demand applications for its case managers and Chicago public services agencies.
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HMS is one of the 22,700 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of April 30, 2006. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.
Unlike traditional businesses which track customers, the Chicago Housing Authority needed a solution to enable its constituents and partners -- multiple public service agencies throughout Chicago -- to use the system and be able to view and access data on public housing residents and their families. Ease of application development and customization was critical in the Chicago Housing Authority's evaluation because the organization needed to integrate data from existing home-grown systems and develop an application that securely shared only data that was necessary and appropriate for each particular user.
"Social services has historically been a 'pen and paper' operation, meaning important information was locked in file folders or, at best, kept in numerous spreadsheets and databases; so moving to a single, central repository for data was a huge step," said Benjamin Todd, senior manager of Relocation and Supportive Services at the Chicago Housing Authority. "Using the AppExchange platform, Model Metrics was able to quickly customize a tailored configuration of Salesforce to meet our unique business demands."
Using the expertise of Model Metrics, the Chicago Housing Authority leveraged the AppExchange platform to develop a number of custom applications to optimize operations, including:
-- Update Goals and Referrals -- allows service providers to review goals
and referrals set up for particular residents; protects privacy by
sharing only information on designated individuals
-- Families -- tracks status of individual residents, including child
care, drug testing, home visits, utilities and referrals
-- Intake Employment -- maintains comprehensive employment history and
current employment status of residents
-- Manage Case Loads -- provides secure sharing of data and knowledge to
the specific works assigned to a family's case
-- Reporting -- enables real-time reporting on all activities and data
tracked during the various stages of the resident housing relocation
process
"Model Metrics' expertise and the user-friendliness of Salesforce allowed us to improve client service and gain greater cross-department efficiency, after just a 3-month implementation period, and without a significant cost investment," added Todd.
About the Chicago Housing Authority
The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is a governmental agency appointed by the mayor of the City of Chicago. Its primary funding is by the federal government through the U. S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.
The CHA is currently in the seventh year of its 10-year Plan for Transformation, which is designed to rebuild or rehab a total of 25,000 apartments for public housing families and seniors. It is the largest reconstruction effort of public housing in U.S. history. The CHA is providing housing for every lease-compliant resident, and better access to services like job-training, day care and drug treatment, which can lead to meaningful economic opportunities. The Plan for Transformation is changing the dynamic of and reshaping some of Chicago's most desolate neighborhoods. It is also assisting public housing residents to improve their lives and those of their children through self-sufficiency.
About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com's on-demand platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications quickly and easily, customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their unique business needs, and distribute and sell on-demand apps at http://www.appexchange.com/. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com's world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.
As of April 30, 2006, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 22,700 customers and approximately 444,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust. 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.
NOTE: Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and AppExchange and Successforce are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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