GBTA Honors Salesforce.com with Inaugural GBTA Spotlight on Transformation Recognition

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)—the voice of the global business travel industry, today recognized Salesforce.com with its first GBTA Spotlight on Transformation sponsored by Concur (NASDAQ: CNQR). The new program focuses on the future thought leaders of business travel management and highlights successful innovators that allow the travel manager and the corporate traveler to elevate the business of travel.

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"Business travel is an ever-evolving and constantly changing profession at the very forefront of our global economy," said Michael W. McCormick, GBTA executive director and COO. "We are pleased to honor Salesforce.com with the first Spotlight on Transformation for their efforts to allow the business travel community to visualize what it truly takes to thrive in today's rapidly changing business environment."

In the process of building their global travel program, Salesforce.com decided to harness the power of their own internally built social media tool, Chatter. This tool, built into every Salesforce application, is a collaboration platform that connects people and information, fast. It works seamlessly across every application - even legacy technologies - and makes your data shareable, searchable and social. They developed a Virtual Global Travel Community that now exceeds 2,000 members, and has provided a forum for Road Warriors - which improves service levels and provides a global service network that could never have been attained with a traditional travel program.

"We are proud to be a sponsor of the GBTA Spotlight on Transformation series," said Robson Grieve, executive vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Concur. "At Concur we strive for innovation and are honored to help recognize stories of transformation like Salesforce.com. It is important to have an ongoing dialogue about new and innovative ideas in our industry, and this new program is a great way to shine a spotlight on the incredible innovations that are taking place all over the world in the entire business travel profession."

Throughout the year, the GBTA Spotlight on Transformation stories will appear in a webinar series and will be highlighted with a Spotlight column issued several times in the Global Business Travel® magazine. The program and the stories will be showcased prominently at the GBTA Convention in San Diego, the Australia/New Zealand conference in Melbourne and the European conference in Prague. More information on the GBTA Spotlight on Transformation recognition program will be made available on our website at gbta.org.  

About GBTA Convention
The GBTA Convention, with nearly 7,000 attendees, is the largest, most comprehensive annual gathering of business travel and meetings managers, meeting planners, procurement professionals and suppliers anywhere in the world. The Business Travel Event of the Year ® features: more than 70 industry-leading education sessions organized into 20+ specialized tracks geared to specific levels of experience and a variety of disciplines; a 400+ company Exposition showcasing market choices not available at other industry gatherings; sessions featuring world-renowned speakers and industry leaders; a wide selection of professional development opportunities; and, much more. For more information on the GBTA Convention, visit gbta.org/convention.

About the Global Business Travel Association
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is the world's premier business travel and meetings organization. Collectively, GBTA's 6,000 plus members manage over $340 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually. GBTA provides its network of 21,000 business and government travel and meetings managers, as well as travel service providers, with networking events, news, education & professional development, research, and advocacy. For more information, visit gbta.org. 

SOURCE Global Business Travel Association