Salesforce.com recently announced plans to open an office in Oregon and create hundreds of high-paying jobs. Business Oregon has been working with the company for months along with local partners, and the new Business Expansion Program (BEP), passed by the Legislature in 2011, was a key factor in bringing Salesforce to the state.
With the BEP, Salesforce.com is eligible to receive an incentive from the state equal to two years worth of the estimated new personal income tax revenue the newly created jobs would generate. To be considered for BEP, companies must have 150 or more employees and must plan to hire at least 50 new employees in Oregon. Its wages must be 150 percent above the state or county average, whichever is less, and be in a traded-sector industry. The bill passed by the Legislature was co-sponsored by State Sen. Richard Devlin and State Rep. Tobias Read.
Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based developer of customer relationship management software (NYSE: CRM) with 8,700 employees and $2.6 billion in annual revenue, was considering several states for its new office.
Salesforce spokesman Andrew Schmitt told the Oregonian last month that the company expects “to bring on hundreds of people in the coming years” at the new Oregon office. That includes jobs across multiple functions, including software development, information technology, finance, human resources and support. The exact location of the office has yet to be announced, but is expected to be somewhere in the Portland metro area. Schmitt said Salesforce chose the area for the region’s “incredible talent pool” and the proximity to its San Francisco headquarters.
