Salesforce acquisitions have given their customers the gift of increased sales and satisfaction. Here’s how.
Parth Patel
CEO at Six Consulting, Inc. :: Salesforce Consulting | Inc 5000 | Corporate Plus | Regional Supplier of Year (Class III))
In terms of exponential growth, there is no other company that personifies it better than Salesforce. Little did anyone realize back in March 1999, when Salesforce was launched in a one-bedroom apartment next to Marc Benioff’s (a sales executive at Oracle) house, atop Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, would become one of the most iconic companies in the CRM industry. Together with his partners- Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez, and Dave Moellenhoff, they went about creating a storm in the cloud computing sector. The idea was simple – software should be available for all to use without having to spend money and invest in expensive infrastructure to install the computer platforms on standalone computers- otherwise known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Sales from the Marketing Cloud and Commerce cloud divisions are reported together on the company's financial statements. Last year, they took in $1.9 billion in revenue or 15% of total sales. That's an increase of 12% from two years earlier. This past quarter of 2019, the Marketing and Commerce cloud raked in $616 million. That's an increase of 36% from the $452 million reported for the same quarter in 2018.
History
The company’s growth has been mind-boggling since those first days. Towards that end, the company started developing its prototype. It was a success and their revenue was calculated at $5.4 million for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2001. (Source: Salesforce.com)
The next bold move came in 2016 when in a single year, they went on a record acquisition spree and acquired 12 companies. Their aim was simple. In order to offer a wide range of services to their clients, they were keen on acquiring companies that belonged to diverse segments like service software, AI start-ups, etc. the main advantage of this strategy was that their clients could now take advantage of the cloud computing technology without being held back by legacy data that was stuck in siloed systems. Integration was the key. Many enterprises had legacy data on their on-site servers that were still necessary to run operations. Thanks to acquisitions such as MuleSoft it is now possible to extract such data quite easily and take advantage of their operations.
Nothing can be more clear than when you analyze their top acquisitions over the years.
Source: SalesforceBen
Starting in 1999, when the company was launched right till 2010, the initial acquisitions helped lay down the groundwork for the company and its offerings.
Over the years, Salesforce acquisitions have allowed their customers to get access to a wide range of services that have served to enhance their Sales and Marketing needs. Outlined below are some of the key acquisitions that enable this holistic solution.
Salesforce key acquisitions
Quip:
Quip docs are embedded with live Salesforce data and embedded conversation provides perfect context. If you are still stuck on emailing documents from standalone word processing programs or communicating in siloed apps, you can get the freedom to combine documents, spreadsheets, and slides with real-time chat and Salesforce. Quip boosts team productivity by enabling cross-functional teams to discuss, revise, comment, and reach consensus on their work, from any device.
Salesforce announced that Krux would now be known as Salesforce DMP. And then in the spring of 2019, Salesforce DMP became Audience Studio. Monthly, Audience Studio interacts with more than 3 billion browsers and devices, supports more than 200 billion data collection events, processes more than 5 billion CRM records, and orchestrates more than 200 billion personalized consumer experiences. Through combining Audience Studio with other Salesforce solutions —particularly products within Marketing Cloud — marketing teams can achieve a much fuller view of both current and potential customers, and thus achieve better results.
ExactTarget was renamed as Salesforce Email Studio and worked to unify Salesforce CRM with the power of the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. Available for ExactTarget and Salesforce customers, it allows you to seamlessly combine your CRM data and digital marketing data together, so you can simplify data management, and link data directly to a contact or lead record in Salesforce, building a single view of the customer. By consolidating data into a single location, you gain better visibility into emerging trends, enabling you to make better decisions, take quicker action, and focus on results, instead of spending your time manually pulling disparate data together via spreadsheets.
Repackaged as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it is the leading e-commerce solution that has allowed customers to enjoy a personalized experience with AI. Salesforce Commerce Cloud empowers you to create seamless e-commerce experiences that inspire and convert today's connected shoppers. With our cloud-based e-commerce software, you can go to market faster and smarter — delivering personalized customer experiences across mobile, digital, and social platforms. Whether you’re in B2C or B2B, Commerce Cloud tools can give your business a boost. Commerce Cloud products work to drive growth, strengthen your e-commerce strategy, and enhance your customer base. Start achieving great results with the world’s leading e-commerce software today.
Customers expect connected experiences. They don't want to see the seams where your systems and departments meet. MuleSoft brings this together by helping organizations change and innovate faster by making it easy to connect any application, data, and device with APIs — Application Programming Interfaces. APIs are messengers that take requests and tell a system what a user wants it to do, then returns the response back to that user. MuleSoft can connect any system, application, data, and device to unleash the power of the Customer 360. The combined power of MuleSoft, the #1 integration platform, and Salesforce, the #1 CRM, enables customers to accelerate digital transformation. Together, MuleSoft and Salesforce give companies the ability to unlock data across systems, develop scalable integration framework, and ultimately create differentiated, connected experiences at a rapid pace. Across various integration patterns, Salesforce products, and third-party systems — the integration possibilities are endless. From developing integrated applications with Lightning Platform and Heroku, achieving a single customer view in Sales and Service Cloud by integrating siloed third-party systems, or connecting the Salesforce 360 with legacy sources to synchronize order, invoice, and product information.
Tableau helps people see and understand data. As part of the Salesforce Ohana, it offers the world’s leading analytics solution for all your data. Tableau can help you fully leverage your rich customer data by providing analytics for everyone in your organization. You can use Tableau to blend Salesforce data from across the Customer 360 platform with your other business data for increased visibility and a deeper understanding of your customers. Provide your finance, operations, channel teams, and executives with secure, up-to-date, customized views of your data.
Cloud-based software is a huge industry right now with the global public cloud services sector pegged to grow by 17% in 2020, to a total of $266.4 billion, according to Gartner Inc.
And with all these offerings, the sky is truly the limit for Salesforce and its customers.