Despite a challenging 2020 year, Salesforce became a leading company in philanthropy (Change the World), culture (#1 Top 50 Companies That Care), innovations (World’s Most Innovative Companies), and acquisitions (6 new acquisitions were added to the long Salesforce’s list).

As the Salesforce ecosystem and community are growing, the CRM’s functionality is also expanding. Acquiring companies is one of the key elements of Salesforce’s growth strategy. For January 2021, Salesforce has snapped up 66 companies, and it’s obvious the company has big plans for the future.

In this post, you’ll learn about the world of Salesforce acquisitions. You’ll find out the reasons why Salesforce is interested in acquiring cutting-edge and AI-related companies. Moreover, you’ll see the list of the top 10 Salesforce acquisitions and read about their current state.

3 Reasons Why Salesforce Acquires Businesses

Demand for CRM software is growing. According to the SuperOffice statistics, the CRM business segment’s revenue is expected to reach more than $80 billion by 2025. In turn, Salesforce continues to hunt and acquire innovative companies. What are the primary reasons for such increased interests in software businesses?

Keep up with the competition

The CRM market is full of various platforms providing a “360-degree view of customer” services. The major Salesforce competitors are Adobe, Oracle CRM for Demand, and Microsoft Dynamic 365 CRM. Each of them includes specific features. To be competitive and stand out from the crowd, Salesforce acquires leading digital companies and broaden opportunities for its clients.

Expand its functionality

The CRM platform offers useful marketing and sales tools for various industries, such as retail, healthcare, financial services, media, manufacturing, science, and nonprofit. By acquiring new technologies, Salesforce makes it easier for B2C and B2B medium-sized and large enterprises to run their businesses and use data effectively.

To stay #1 CRM in the world

In 2020 Salesforce was named the #1 CRM platform for the eighth consecutive year. Salesforce development company path is exciting (over the year, Salesforce has added more than 125 new features). As a dynamic, growing company, Salesforce is always in the process of exploring new horizons and searching for new solutions. An extensive Salesforce acquisition list confirms its leading position in the CRM software market.

List of Top 10 Salesforce Acquisitions, Reasons, and How They’re Doing Now

Slack

Salesforce acquired Slack, an innovative enterprise communications platform, for 27.7 billion. It’s the largest Salesforce acquisition ever. Combination of Slack and Salesforce Customer 360 is a big step forward in transforming working processes in the work-from-everywhere world.

As more and more companies move to a digital world, together, Salesforce and Slack meet new virtual business demands. Salesforce users will get collaboration tools, including chat and video functionality, for connecting team members, clients, and partners with each other in a familiar environment.

Besides, it brings Salesforce into closer parity with its competitors, which have already made such deals – Adobe with Workfront, Microsoft with Microsoft Teams.

Acumen

Acumen Solutions, a leading cloud consultancy with Salesforce knowledge and industry expertise, will become a part of Salesforce Professional Services. In turn, Salesforce will be able to provide its customers with a set of useful solutions and products to run business in a new normal. This collaboration will allow Salesforce customers to transform their businesses into digital easier and faster.

Tableau

Acquiring Tableau, the world’s leading analytics platform, Salesforce extended its Einstein Analytics software capabilities. With Tableau, Salesforce users can see powerful analytics and insights, and use them to make smarter business decisions and better customer experience.

Now Tableau is one of the main elements of Salesforce’s Customer 360 vision. Also, the company took an active part in the Opening Keynote at Dreamforce 2019.

Mulesoft

Salesforce acquired Mulesoft, an integration platform for connecting on-premise systems and cloud products, to make digital transformation easier for businesses. Together they enable clients to integrate with the back office and transfer information across clouds and data sources within their CRMs.

Mulesoft is going to transform into an “Integration Cloud,” where users will be able to manage data, devices, and apps.

Heroku

With Heroku, as a part of Salesforce, customers get an excellent suite for creating customer-centric apps. Using various tools and workflows and integrating CRM data, it’s possible to design sophisticated secure apps that serve specific use cases.

Heroku functions successfully and is always in the process of custom development and improvement of its features. In January 2021, it was announced that Connection Pooling for Heroku Postgres is moving into GA. It allows using up to 10,000 client connections and building more complex apps with simple architectures on the Heroku platform.

ExactTarget/Pardot/MarketingCloud

It’s important to mention that ExactTarget purchased Pardot to power their collection of helpful marketing tools. When it happened, ExactTarget became an attractive product for Salesforce.

The acquisition of ExactTarget, a marketing automation software, allowed Salesforce to step into the marketing space. Moreover, it boosts the growth and leadership of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Users can create and manage digital marketing campaigns more effectively. Using new digital technologies and reaching customers via social networks, emails, and mobile devices, companies enhance their brand awareness and customer experience.

In January 2021, Pardot, a B2B marketing automation solution, boasts such advancements as B2B Marketing Analytics Plus, Engagement History Dashboards, new Pardot email experience, and developer sandboxes for testing Pardot.

ClickSoftware

Collaborating with ClickSoftware, software for managing mobile and field-service workers, Salesforce has become a leading service platform. With this acquisition, Salesforce introduced Field Service Lightning that allows companies to provide quality customer service. ClickSoftware enables to empower service employees and improve the mobile workforce.

Now Salesforce FSL attracts more and more ISV solutions thanks to the acquisition of ClickSoftware. In turn, Salesforce focuses on developing scheduling and location technology.

DemandWare

As Salesforce was initially interested in the B2B cloud software market, the acquisition of Demandware allowed Salesforce to take a big step into the B2C market.

As Demandware provides cloud-based eCommerce services, Salesforce can upsell its existing Marketing and CRM customers with deals, including commerce services. It is also possible to reach new clients by offering them marketing and analytics services.

This collaboration has led to creating the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a platform for building strong customer relationships. Retailers can customise their commerce, use digital engagement channels, and provide a personalised experience for every customer.

Krux

The value to Salesforce of this acquisition is that it provides its customers with an opportunity to manage marketing and advertising campaigns more effectively. Uniting with Krux, a data management platform, Salesforce created a Marketing Cloud tool to gather the company’s big data and better organise sales operations.

Krux is now Audience Studio, a software that provides data management tools for building a better customer experience across all channels.

Quip

Thanks to this acquisition, Salesforce users can collaborate around documents and spreadsheets within the platform. With Quip, a tool including word processing and presentation software, Salesforce makes it easier to store and share documents with live data from CRM among team members, thus increasing user satisfaction and engagement.

Now Salesforce Quip offers “Live Apps” that are fully interactive and aimed to manage your work in documents. Among such apps are Kanban Board, Calendar, Project Tracker, etc.

Quip is used by 934 companies, including 21st Century Fox and Securities America Inc.

Salesforce Activity in Acquiring AI-related companies

The Salesforce State of Connected Customer report states that 62% of customers expect companies to adapt based on their actions and behaviour. Using AI technologies in business processes can help to provide advanced customer experience and improve customer retention.

As businesses need powerful AI solutions, Salesforce actively acquires AI-related companies and expands Einstein AI platform’s capabilities. For example, Salesforce acquired another AI company, MetaMind, and integrated it into Salesforce Einstein. This incredible partnership allowed embedding deep learning within the CRM platform and automating much daily-based marketing, sales, and support processes.

In 2019, Salesforce bought conversational AI startup, Bonobo and allowed its users to extract insights from online customer interactions via various sources (chat, video, voice, and email).

Summary

By acquiring digital software in different business niches, Salesforce builds a fully operational ecosystem with its own AppStore. In such a way, Salesforce keeps up the competition with other tech giants like Microsoft and Adobe and stays #1 world’s CRM platform.

Acquisitions also allow offering Salesforce users different functional products and solutions that they can use to meet customer expectations and provide excellent customer service.