Citigroup signs 30,000 seat deal with Salesforce.com

Citigroup has signed a deal with Salesforce.com that will make it the on-demand customer relationship management vendor’s biggest user.

Under the contract, Citigroup will roll out the software as a service CRM system to 30,000 staff. Salesforce’s previous biggest user was investment bank Merrill Lynch, which signed a deal to roll out the hosted application to 25,000 desktops in February.

Salesforce chief executive Chief Executive Marc Benioff announced the deal as the company released its third quarter financial results. The hosted CRM vendor made $6.5m (£3.25m) profits on revenues of $192.8m (£86.4m) for the three months ending on 31 October.

The vendor has continued to expand, unveiling its Force.com on-demand development platform in September.

But the company has also faced problems. Last month it was hit by phishers, who conned an employee into divulging a company password that gave access to the Salesforce.com customer list, exposing its customers to fraud and malware.