ThomasNet Leverages Salesforce.com Cloud Computing; Builds New Recruiting Web Site on Force.com

Challenge

• ThomasNet, the leading online industrial marketplace, needed a new recruiting system and careers Web site that would allow hiring managers to aggressively recruit and bring on the best sales people.
• Hiring managers lacked an easy way to post job positions, resulting in a stale careers site.
• With an increasing number of departments asking for custom applications, the company wanted to move more applications onto the salesforce.com cloud and build on Force.com.

Solution

• With help from salesforce.com partner Appirio, ThomasNet took recruiting to the clouds by building applications that integrate with Salesforce CRM on Force.com.
• ThomasNet then extended its new recruiting solution to its Web site using Force.com sites. ThomasNet Careers—a rich, integrated careers page and job application Web site—went live in just 3 weeks and has already seen an increase of over 500% in qualified resume submissions.
• Hiring managers easily push job descriptions from the Force.com-based recruiting apps onto the public-facing ThomasNet Careers site. Once a job candidate submits an application, that information automatically flows back into the recruiting system and into Salesforce CRM where it is tracked by human resources.
• ThomasNet recently implemented Appirio’s Referral Management Solution for Viral Marketing−which integrates Facebook’s social network with Salesforce CRM—to manage and measure word-of-mouth referrals.
• Force.com sites isn’t the only salesforce.com product used by ThomasNet. The company moved its telemarketing department off Goldmine and onto Salesforce CRM, bringing the total number of departments using Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition to 8.
• ThomasNet met feature requests from other departments by building custom tabs including:

- Applicants, Applications, and Positions, for its careers Web site hosted on Force.com sites
- News Room Stories, to pull all press releases posted to ThomasNet.com into Salesforce CRM
- ThomasContracts, which tracks all contract data

• The company integrated the ThomasNet.com editorial database with Salesforce CRM to drive segmentation efforts. Now salespeople are armed with valuable prospect information. ThomasNet also built a custom campaign conversion reporting application in ASP.NET that pulls data from Salesforce CRM.
• The company’s sales resource help desk uses Salesforce CRM Service to resolve internal issues and to answer new prospect inquiries. ThomasNet also deployed Envox’s PhoneLink, a computer telephony integration solution from the AppExchange that adds screen pop and click-to-dial capabilities to Salesforce CRM.
• Employees use a Salesforce CRM ideas community to request and vote on Salesforce CRM enhancements and new AppExchange applications.
• Administrators took Salesforce.com Training & Certification courses where they learned to build custom applications and create workflows. Administrator and developer certifications give employees confidence and confirm their expertise and knowledge of Salesforce CRM and Force.com.

Results

• ThomasNet’s recruiting is completely run and managed in the cloud on the Force.com platform. Building on Force.com sites has resulted in a 500% increase in monthly resume submissions as of Q1 2009.
• By integrating Salesforce CRM with Facebook via Appirio’s Referral Management Solution, the company extended its recruiting efforts to include social networking, making it even easier for existing sales representatives to recruit.
• Customer support agents respond rapidly to inquiries for promotional services and provide outstanding service with screen pops and click-to-dial capabilities.
• Employees from nearly every department have asked for access to Salesforce CRM. So far, every capability employees have asked for can be provided using Salesforce CRM.