Revel Consulting, a Kirkland, Washington-based business and IT consulting firm, has been selected by Reader’s Digest to integrate a software-as-a-service product with the company’s current customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

 

Reader’s Digest selected Revel based on the firm’s past successes in SaaS (News - Alert) implementation as well as Revel’s “pure consulting” approach to business.

 

In October TMC had the news that Revel announced the appointment of Mr. Arif Samad as Senior Associate. A veteran consultant with more than 10 years experience in designing and implementing IT-based business solutions, Samad was tapped to lead Revel's integration efforts as part of the firm's SaaS practice.

 

SaaS, software deployment in which applications are hosted off-premise, is a rapidly expanding industry. According to a recent Gartner (News - Alert) Press Release, global revenues for SaaS will exceed $6.4 billion in 2008, a 27 percent increase over 2007 revenues of $5.1 billion.

 

 “The combination of Revel’s industry expertise in SaaS and direct access to their senior consultants made the difference,” said Kelly Kolb, Director of Business Intelligence for Allrecipes.com (Food & Entertainment group of Reader’s Digest). “We needed a team with experience integrating different tech platforms into Salesforce.com (News - Alert) in a way that meets our business needs.”

 

According to the agreement, Revel will define and then implement an enterprise-wide product for the sales and marketing data of Reader’s Digest’s Food & Entertainment group, including such properties as allrecipes.com, Every Day with Rachel Ray and Taste of Home.

 

Using the infrastructure of the industry-standard CRM tool Salesforce.com, Revel officials say they will focus on designing a hosted CRM product which, according to Reader’s Digest officials, will allow the publisher to access information to improve decision-making.

 

“The challenge will be to harness data collected from a number of different sources, such as Web, direct mail and e-mail marketing, on four technology platforms and aggregate it into a single Salesforce.com view,” said Joseph Sedmak, Revel’s Founder and President.

 

Revel has developed a specialty in helping companies implement SaaS products. The company was named by Inc. Magazine in 2008 as the fifth fastest growing services company and the 48th fastest growing company in the U.S.

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