CODA Launches First Enterprise Accounting System Built and Run Entirely on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

LONDON and Harrogate, UK, salesforce.com Dreamforce Europe conference – May 07, 2008 - CODA Group, the global finance systems specialist, and salesforce.com, [NYSE: CRM] the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, today announced the immediate availability of CODA 2go, the first on-demand financial system built entirely on salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform-as-a-Service.

The first release, launching today, delivers Opportunity to Cash functionality, enabling users to go from the “opportunities” in Salesforce to create an invoice at the click of a button and post the transaction to their sales ledger. It is fully integrated with salesforce.com’s CRM application and will help companies manage business processes by providing simple access for authorised users from initial sales enquiry, to closing the deal, to collecting cash within one integrated product. The system was launched today at Dreamforce Europe, salesforce.com’s European User and Developer Conference at the Barbican Centre in London.

“CODA’s development team has worked tirelessly to get this first release of the product out and we have been impressed with the level of enthusiasm and expertise they have shown throughout the collaboration,” said Polly Sumner, President, Platform, Alliances, and Services at salesforce.com. “We share a common vision with CODA to enable customers to manage and share all of their business information entirely on demand. CODA 2go is a great example of how the flexibility inherent in the Force.com platform enables ISVs to deliver innovative and breakthrough business applications.”

CODA 2go runs on the Force.com Platform, benefiting from the industry-leading performance and availability, global scale, multi-tenancy and security of salesforce.com’s award-winning service. 

“CODA’s 25+ years experience in developing international accounting systems, combined with the Force.com platform, have enabled us to deliver a robust on-demand finance application more quickly and efficiently while maintaining our high standards,” said Jeremy Roche, CEO of CODA. “The first release covers Opportunity to Cash processes with General Ledger Accounting, Purchase to Pay and Sales Order Processing functionality being delivered over the coming months. We have developed and delivered functionality in months that would have taken years had we built this from the ground up. And because we are using a proven technology platform in Force.com, it includes world-class security and the ability to quickly customise user screens, which have been lacking in on-premise applications to date.

“This is the first product of its kind and we believe it is unrivalled in the marketplace. We want to do for finance what salesforce.com has done for CRM, and Software as a Service is a logical extension of CODA’s ‘open platform’ commitment. This clearly shows that in a mature software market we remain agile and innovative. CODA is known for developing the best finance applications in the world and we believe we have done it again, only this time delivered using the best on-demand technology available.”

CODA 2go – World’s First Accounting System on Force.com
CODA 2go will deliver all the advantages of CODA’s financial expertise, including: multi-everything accounting; built on a unified ledger, for optimum efficiency, consistency and accuracy; together with the most flexible chart of accounts on the market – enabling users to analyse costs and revenues easily across many different dimensions. All delivered as a flexible, scaleable on-demand service. The applications can be used individually or together or be easily integrated to supplement an existing “on-premise” accounting system. With a long track record of customer success, CODA 2go will reduce the cost and complexity of managing and maintaining software infrastructure, and will deliver significant benefits to customers, including:
• Improved financial visibility – across the whole process, from converting an opportunity to an order, through to creating an invoice and tracking the delivery of the order.
• Real-time credit management – built-in rules to ensure approval requirements are met, for example preventing accidental credit limit breaches.
• Better-informed decisions – easy, controlled “self-service” access to finance and CRM information to assist decision-makers, without tying up the finance team.
• Control – the finance department retains full control over which transactions and other data items from the CODA systems are made available to the sales team.

"When we saw CODA 2go for the first time, we knew it was the right finance application for our professional services business,” said Adam S. Caplan, President, Model Metrics LLC, CODA 2go Beta customer. “It looks great with the same look and feel as our Salesforce CRM and the integration is seamless. It will help to streamline our customer account management across the business and give us fantastic flexibility and a wealth of features while leveraging our on-demand application strategy."

Pricing and Availability
CODA 2go is currently scheduled to be available on a trial basis in the current quarter via a monthly subscription model. Initial pricing for a full subscription to CODA 2go will begin at $125 per user per month with other pricing options available for alternative feature packs.

Please visit http://www.coda2go.com or call +44 (0)1423 509999 for more information.

Jeremy Roche will be announcing the launch live on stage today during the Keynote presentation alongside Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, at Dreamforce Europe.

The Keynote address can be viewed live from 1300 BST at http://www.salesforce.com/investor

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Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Force.com reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables the creation of a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing.  Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.
 
The AppExchange economy continues to expand as thousands of salesforce.com customers have installed thousands of on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet.  The company’s Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

As of January 31, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 41,000 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks.  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.
 
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Jane Lawrence
EMEA PR Director
salesforce.com
Tel: +44 (0) 870 734 5052
jlawrence@salesforce.com

ABOUT UNIT4

UNIT4 is a global business software company that creates, delivers and supports adaptable business software and services globally to help dynamic organizations manage their business needs effectively. We aspire to set the global standard for business software that helps dynamic organizations to embrace change simply, quickly and cost effectively. We have a broad portfolio of solutions that address different markets, requirements, technologies and types of organization.

With offices in 13 European countries, as well 6 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, a revenue of €393.6 million was realized in 2008. UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands. The company has around 3,450 employees.

The Group incorporates a number of the world’s leading change embracing software brands including Agresso Business World and CODA financial management software.

For services intensive organizations, the Agresso Business World ERP suite is widely acknowledged as the business software solution that delivers the lowest Total Cost of Change. This is achieved thanks to its VITA™ architecture which allows for ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and services that can cost firms huge sums of money each year.

CODA, our best-of-class financials brand, offers mid- to large sized organizations around the world financial management, analysis and business process management. CODA solutions are differentiated by its LINK™ architecture that provides financial executives a ‘no compromise’ approach to application change management by allowing business systems to be added or changed and easily integrated into the most dependable enterprise financials solution on the market.

For more information, please visit: www.unit4.com