Where to even begin with Salesforce acquisitions. It’s like Salesforce is playing a never-ending game of Monopoly. But instead of buying up properties, it’s buying up companies left, right, and center.
Harald is the Co-Founder of Hutte, bringing his vision of no-code DevOps to life. His passion enables teams and individuals to focus on what matters most – bringing value to the users they build for.
Matthias Rolke
Freelance DevOps Consultant
Matthias is a freelance DevOps consultant for the Salesforce platform and an advisor for Hutte. He loves open-source software and maintains a few SFDX-related tools.
Article Highlights
The article discusses Salesforce’s approach to acquiring companies that offer complementary products and services, which allows them to expand their offerings and provide more value to customers.
It highlights some of Salesforce’s major acquisitions, such as Slack, Tableau, and MuleSoft, and their significance in enhancing Salesforce’s capabilities in various domains like collaboration, analytics, and integration.
The article also touches on the challenges Salesforce faces with acquisitions, such as integration and valuation, and provides an optimistic outlook on Salesforce’s future strategy and its impact on the CRM industry.
Salesforce is the powerhouse of the business world, constantly adding more talent to its already impressive roster.
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And the best part? With each acquisition, Salesforce becomes mightier. It is constantly evolving and growing, and soon it will be unstoppable.
One of Salesforce's impressive features is its fondness for acquiring companies that offer complementary products and services. With each new acquisition, Salesforce expands its offerings and provides even more value to its customers.
Salesforce is incredibly strategic in its acquisitions. The team at Salesforce is always looking for opportunities tofill gaps in their product lineup and enhance the overall customer experience. And judging by their continued success, it's clear that this strategy is paying off.
So, let’s have a look at some of the biggest Salesforce acquisitions to date.
The importance of acquisitions for Salesforce
Acquisitions are essential for Salesforce for several reasons:
Market expansion
They allow Salesforce to expand its market share by getting new customers, technologies, and geographic regions.
Competitive advantage
Innovative technologies and talented employees can give Salesforce a competitive edge. By partnering with companies with unique intellectual property or proprietary software, Salesforce can enhance its own product offerings and stay ahead of its competitors.
Faster time-to-market
Acquisitions can provide Salesforce with a shortcut to entering new markets and developing new products. By taking on existing companies, Salesforce can skip the lengthy process of building new products and establishing a presence in new markets.
Diversification
They can help Salesforce diversify its business and reduce risk by expanding into new industries or markets.
Revenue growth
Acquisitions can be an effective way for Salesforce to increase its revenue and productivity. By obtaining companies with established customer bases and revenue streams, Salesforce can quickly generate additional revenue without relying solely on organic growth.
A brief history of Salesforce's acquisitions
Salesforce has made numerous acquisitions since its founding in 1999.
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One of Salesforce's earliest acquisitions was of Kieden, a provider of AdWords management solutions, in 2006. This acquisition helped Salesforce integrate AdWords data into its CRM platform, giving marketers greater visibility into their campaigns.
In 2008, Salesforce acquired InStranet, a provider of knowledge management software. This acquisition helped Salesforce strengthen its customer service offerings by providing more comprehensive tools for managing customer interactions.
During 2010, Salesforce made a major acquisition of Jigsaw, a business contact data provider. This acquisition helped Salesforce expand its data and improve the accuracy and completeness of its customer data.
Salesforce continued to make strategic acquisitions in the following years, including the 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget, an email marketing software provider, for $2.5 billion. This acquisition helped Salesforce expand its marketing cloud functionalities and compete more effectively with other marketing automation platforms.
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In 2016, Salesforce made one of its larger acquisitions with the $2.8 billion acquisition of Demandware, an e-commerce platform. This acquisition helped Salesforce expand its services into the e-commerce space and compete more effectively with companies like Shopify and Magento.
Salesforce also made several smaller acquisitions in the years that followed.
Challenges of acquisitions for Salesforce
While acquiring companies can be extremely beneficial for companies like Salesforce, it can also be a complex and challenging process at the same time. Here are some of the challenges that Salesforce faces when making acquisitions:
Integration
One of the biggest challenges of acquisitions is integrating the obtained company into the existing organization. This involves aligning the acquired company's culture, processes, systems, and people with Salesforce's. Integration can be a time-consuming process that requires careful planning and execution.
Valuation
Acquiring companies can be expensive, and determining the right price for an acquisition can be difficult. Salesforce must conduct thorough due diligence to assess the target company's value and ensure that the price paid is reasonable.
Competitors
Salesforce operates in a highly competitive market. This means that other companies may also be interested in taking on the same targets, which can increase the price and make acquisitions more taxing.
Regulatory and legal issues
Acquisitions can also pose legal and regulatory risks. Salesforce must ensure that the acquisition complies with all relevant laws and regulations, including antitrust laws, data privacy regulations, and intellectual property laws.
Integration of technologies
Salesforce may acquire companies with technologies that are different from its own. Integrating these technologies into Salesforce's existing platforms can be complicated, as it may require larger system and process changes.
Cultural differences
Acquired companies may have different cultures, values, and ways of working than Salesforce. Salesforce must understand and address these differences to ensure smooth integration and maintain employee morale.
In general, I appreciate the strategy of Salesforce to use, recommend, and even publish open-source software.
Matthias Rolke
Freelance DevOps Consultant
The biggest Salesforce acquisitions and their significance
Biggest Salesforce Acquisitions And Their Significance
Benefits and challenges aside, Salesforce has acquired multiple companies over time, which have played a significant role in the company's growth.
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The following are some of the biggest acquisitions made by Salesforce and their importance.
Salesforce's collaboration capabilities were enhanced through its partnership with Slack, facilitating efficient communication and teamwork.
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As a result, customers now have access to a set of communication and collaboration tools. This partnership helps teams stay in the loop, engage better, and even have access to a set of records.
What came after the acquisition: Slack's innovations have been accelerating rapidly. Shortly after Salesforce completed the acquisition, the company launched Slack-First Customer 360, which included pre-built integrations between Slack and Salesforce.
These integrations comprised:
“Digital Deal Rooms” and “Daily Briefs” for Sales Cloud
“Swarming” and “Expert Finder” for Service Cloud
Intelligent insights from Marketing Cloud, Datorama, and Tableau.
Salesforce acquired Tableau, a cloud-based analytics platform that equips customers to analyze data and create visualizations.
This acquisition improved Salesforce's analytics capabilities and provided customers with more sophisticated tools for information examination and visualization.
What came after the acquisition: Tableau has continued to operate as a standalone application. In contrast, Einstein Analytics has been renamed to Tableau CRM and remains the primary business intelligence tool in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Salesforce launched MuleSoft Composer, a version of MuleSoft designed for the native Salesforce platform.
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The acquisition of the platform enables low-code professionals, such as Salesforce admins, to create integrations using pre-built connectors with minimal effort.
What came after the acquisition: The MuleSoft product has retained its name and core function since the acquisition. However, the company has continuously expanded its range of connectors and templates, making it easier for professionals to integrate with other systems.
ClickSoftware is a platform for managing field service operations, making it easy for customers to operate their field service more efficiently.
By acquiring ClickSoftware, Salesforce enhanced its abilities in field service management and offered solutions for supervising field service teams.
What came after the acquisition: Investments have been made in advanced scheduling and location technology since the acquisition.
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Salesforce has also since leveraged Field Service Lightning's infrastructure to enable organizations to make on-the-spot decisions, especially when transitioning to no-contact service models.
Now rebranded as Salesforce Field Service, this platform remains a top choice for organizations with mobile workforces, thanks to a constant stream of new updates.
Vlocity is a software company that focuses on offering cloud-based industry solutions through multiple applications developed on the Salesforce platform.
The applications are created to aid businesses in efficientlynurturing customer relationshipswithin certain industries, such as healthcare and telecommunications.
Salesforce has expanded its presence within the industry and can now provide customers with more precise solutions by integrating Vlocity.
What came after the acquisition: Salesforce has renamed Vlocity as Salesforce Industries. True to its name, this rebranded software is a comprehensive solution for Salesforce CRM users. It seamlessly combines the core platform with industry-specific processes, models, and solutions.
Datorama is a marketing intelligence platform that enables customers to analyze their marketing data and generate insights swiftly. This acquisition significantly enhanced Salesforce's capabilities in this area.
The acquisition allows Salesforce to offer customers tools to monitor their marketing efforts and generate profitable data.
What came after the acquisition: Salesforce is expanding its integration with Datorama. In addition, Datorama is launching a new developer portal and introducing ‘activation’ tools designed to benefit marketers.
These upgrades will enable marketers to better understand their ongoing activities, investments, and ROI.
Quip is a cloud-based productivity platform that allows customers to create and manage their documents and projects efficiently. This acquisition provided Salesforce with a considerable enhancement in productivity.
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The partnership also allowed the company to offer customers a complete set of tools for executing and overseeing their documentation and overall efforts.
What came after the acquisition: There are a few reasons why Quip has proven to be a valuable acquisition for Salesforce. One of the key features is its bi-directional sync that allows CRM data to be integrated seamlessly into a document.
Additionally, Quip offers a variety of 'live apps,' which enable users to include calendars, checklists, videos, and more within a Quip document.
The aim is to enhance cooperation among records, facilitating user communication and providing timely notifications within the two platforms.
Krux is a platform for data management that enables customers to collect, oversee, and analyze customer data rapidly.
The acquisition of Krux strengthened Salesforce's position in the data management ecosystem, allowing the company to provide customers with the ability to collect, govern, and inspect customer data.
What came after the acquisition: Krux was quickly rebranded as Salesforce DMP and integrated into Marketing Cloud. While Salesforce DMP remains in use, the industry trend has moved toward customer data platforms (CDPs).
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Salesforce CDP has now become the flagship product. It provides a well-rounded solution for unifying customer data from various sources and enabling businesses to create a fully personalized customer experience.
Buddy Media is a platform to manage social media campaigns, including creation, engagement, and analysis.
It provided a major boost to Salesforce's social media management capabilities, as it offered customers the functionality to execute, control, and evaluate their social media campaigns.
What came after the acquisition: Buddy Media and Radian6 were combined to form Social Studio, which is now an add-on for Marketing Cloud. Social Studio is fully integrated into the core Salesforce platform. This means that social interactions can trigger the creation of a case in Service Cloud.
SalesforceIQ is a CRM platform that provides customers an easy-to-use platform for enhancing customer relationships.
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The acquisition of SalesforceIQ allowed Salesforce to improve its offerings in the CRM ecosystem considerably, and offer customers the ability to be on top of their customer relationships.
What came after the acquisition: Salesforce has implemented algorithms to improve comprehension of workplace activities since the acquisition. The algorithms acquire data from various sources, such as:
Salesforce acquired Radian6, asocial media monitoring company. Radian6 played a major role in helping Salesforce better understand the social media landscape.
Salesforce employed social media monitoring software to interact with customers on multiple social media platforms.
What came after the acquisition: Since the acquisition, Salesforce has been utilizing Radian6's exceptional technology to monitor millions of real-time conversations daily across multiple platforms, including:
Heroku is a cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS) utilized by customers to deploy and control their applications efficiently.
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The acquisition of Heroku substantially strengthened Salesforce's position in the PaaS space. It enables the company to provide customers with complete tools for producing and refining their applications.
What came after the acquisition: Heroku is still a component of Salesforce, a project aimed at revamping Salesforce's development platforms. The initiative involves unifying these platforms under a single brand and creating connections.
The future outlook for Salesforce and its acquisition strategy
The future for Salesforce and its acquisition strategy appears to be promising. As the company continues to expand its offerings through strategic acquisitions, it is poised to meet its growing market and customer demands.
Salesforce has demonstrated a willingness to invest inemerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence – which has led to additional acquisitions in these areas.
Let's keep our eyes peeled to see how these favorable acquisitions shake up the CRM industry's playing field.
Salesforce has acquired the key to the future
Salesforce stays ahead of competitors by building its own apps by acquiring digital software in various business niches. This strategy helps create a fully operational ecosystem that solidifies Salesforce's position as the global leading CRM platform.
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In addition, these acquisitions enable Salesforce to provide its users with a diverse range of functional products and solutions. This aids them in meeting customer expectations and delivering exceptional customer service.
Needless to say, the future of Salesforce looks bright. Do you want to make your Salesforce processes even brighter with Git-based development? Sign up with Hutte!
