New destination management app for Salesforce.com

April 21, 2008

Buan Consulting has developed a destination management add-on for Salesforce.com to help cities and counties use software to more efficiently interact with the travel and meetings industry. The module has already been deployed in Arlington County, Virginia.

Announcements like these have been trickling out weekly for some time now. Consulting firms and software firms, see the power of the Salesforce.com platform and are often in a good position to spot opportunities to develop systems for their industry niche. I expect that in the next 1-2 years we’re going to continue to see an ever increasing number of custom solutions launched via the AppExchange and built on the force.com platform. Of course for those of you who have been following Salesforce for the past several years now as I have, this will not be new news.

From the official release:

The module helps officials with economic development agencies and convention and visitor bureaus to court and manage their audience of meeting planners, co-op partners, hotels and restaurants, and special attractions. Users can track leads, produce bid proposals, monitor membership status, assign a value to relationships, measure performance by the return on investment, and issue reports that include economic impact. It integrates with common desktop programs such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.

“While customizing Arlington County’s saleforce.com implementation, we saw an opening in the market for municipalities to simplify the way they connect with destination management professionals,” says Dan Buan, CEO of Buan Consulting. “Using SaaS, these organizations get significantly improved functionality for a much lower cost than traditional software deployments, so they don’t have to go through the capital budgeting process or worry about maintenance issues.”

Written by Adam Killam · Filed Under Salesforce.com News