Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM, has made many acquisitions in recent years. A few of them have even reached up to billions of dollars. The company’s main aim towards these acquisitions is still undisclosed but analysts predict that there are clear strategies associated with each one of them.
Being a constant player in the acquisition game, Salesforce has taken definite steps for increasing its stake in the market by making a more technologically advanced CRM solution for its numerous clients. Since the beginning of 2019, Salesforce has acquired nearly 6 companies belonging to diverse segments like service software, AI start-ups, etc. The price tags also differ for each one of these acquisitions.
These acquisitions made by Salesforce come across as good news to various Salesforce consulting companies since an increase in their service offerings will attract more clients towards them. Technological upgradations on the Salesforce platform are required by any Salesforce consulting company for retaining, as well as, attracting customers towards adopting Salesforce for their business.
The key challenge that comes across for Salesforce is to make well-defined integrations between the technologies which have been acquired.
Some of the key acquisitions made by Salesforce in the year 2019 include:
1. Griddable
Salesforce acquired Griddable on 28th January 2019 for an undisclosed amount. Griddable, a startup that provides a platform for synchronizing enterprise data in the cloud for its customers, is based in San Jose, CA. With this acquisition, Salesforce is definitely in plans of expanding the CRM platform for its customers by way of offering cutting edge technology. This will surely help Salesforce in becoming the market leader in CRM solutions.
2. Salesforce foundation
Salesforce, with an aim of working with non-profit organizations like charities and educational institutions, announced its integration with Salesforce foundation, also known as Salesforce.org (a reseller of Salesforce software and services to non-profit organizations) on 16th August 2019. All shares of Salesforce foundation were paid in cash for an amount of $300 million, thereby, turning it into a California based business corporation.
3. MapAnything
On 17th April 2019, Salesforce spent $213 million to acquire MapAnything, which is a location-based intelligence software built on the Salesforce platform. With integrations like route optimization, asset tracking, and map-based visualization, MapAnything will assist Salesforce in the process of increasing the efficiency of sales teams and for providing a better customer experience. This will place Salesforce in a unique position in the CRM market.
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4. Bonobo AI
Salesforce acquired Israel-based conversational AI startup, Bonobo, for a sum of $45 million on 6th May 2019. Bonobo AI, found in 2017, develops Artificial Intelligence-based software which helps companies in getting deeper insights into customers with the help of texts, support calls, and other sorts of communication methods. Its acquisition is part of the Salesforce product, Einstein Assistant, that has not yet been launched for general use.
5. Tableau
The Tableau acquisition by Salesforce on 10th June 2019, for a staggering enterprise value of $15.7 billion, is touted to be the biggest acquisitions ever that has been made by Salesforce to date. There are two gaps that will be filled by Salesforce acquisition of Tableau. One is that data analytics will be at the core of the offerings made by Salesforce in the future, and the other one is the current absence of data visualization as a technology stack in its analytics portfolio for which Tableau integration is the perfect solution.
6. ClickSoftware
Salesforce announced the ClickSoftware Technologies acquisition on 8th August 2019 for $1.35 billion. ClickSoftware Technologies is a field service software company and this acquisition will broaden the field service offering coming under the Service Cloud Category of Salesforce. This acquisition has been done mainly for the purpose of increasing the revenue of Salesforce Service Cloud which crossed $1 billion as per its June 2019 earnings report. In addition to this, Salesforce aims to further meet the needs of its customers by encouraging innovation with Field Service Lightning.
Salesforce is on the lookout for transforming itself from being a niche CRM software provider to one that is more automated, as well as, technologically upgraded, all for ensuring ease of use of the software by its diverse set of customers.
Source: Salesforce, TechCrunch, CIO, Crunchbase, SalesforceBen, Times Of Israel
Pratyush Kumar
