Salesforce Named Top-Tier Software Vendor by APPS RUN THE WORLD in the APPS and CLOUD TOP 500 Market Report

Salesforce Strengths, Domain Expertise, and Key Differentiators

Salesforce's decision to change its legal name from Salesforce, inc. to Salesforce, Inc. reflects the company's ongoing evolution and growth in the global market. This streamlined name change, effective April 4, 2022, underscores Salesforce's commitment to simplifying its brand identity while maintaining its position as a leading provider of customer relationship management solutions.
Salesforce shored up its presence in the enterprise applications market during the pandemic as it became the de-facto Customer 360 champion because hundreds of thousands of its customers that have already adopted its Sales Force Automation as well as Customer Service and Support apps found themselves doubling down their investments to fully automate their digital operations with help from Salesforce.
At the same time, Salesforce acquired Slack to expand into the Collaboration apps market in 2021. The acquisition further intensifies its rivalry with Microsoft, whose Teams chat and video service compete heavily against Slack as the two are battling in several other areas from CRM to analytics. In 2016, both companies tried to buy LinkedIn, but Microsoft ultimately succeeded. Salesforce is the dominant player in customer relationship management software and Microsoft is a distant challenger. With last year’s purchase of Tableau, Salesforce jumped into the data visualization market, taking on Microsoft’s Power BI. The companies also go head-to-head in productivity software, though Microsoft’s Office suite controls the market along with Google. Salesforce acquired Quip in 2016 but hasn’t picked up much momentum against Microsoft and Google. The appointment of Quip co-founder Bret Taylor as co-CEO of Salesforce in November 2021 could reignite the productivity apps market push at Salesforce.
Riding on the popular Salesforce platform, the vendor has seen burgeoning sales of its core products like Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with considerable contributions from the add-ons that are becoming increasingly critical to the long-term successes of these implementations.
The add-ons include Salesforce Shield, a Security Bundle (includes Event Monitoring, Field Audit Trail, and Platform Encryption), an almost must-have for customers when deploying an increasing number of Salesforce instances where security and encryption are considered pivotal.
Salesforce Lightning, the new UI for most Salesforce products, is another component for Salesforce to bolster average selling prices as well as total contract value. Lightning is sold in three versions - Platform for administrators, Starter for professional users, and Console for apps like Sales Cloud. Its pricing is also based on several custom objects that users can access. Generally, the Platform accounts for 5% of total spending when customers need to upgrade from its Classic UI to Lightning Starter contributes 75% and the Console covers the remaining 20%.

Salesforce Recent Developments

In October 2023, Salesforce introduced Life Sciences Cloud representing a significant advancement for pharmaceutical and medical technology companies seeking to streamline drug and device development processes, enhance patient engagement throughout clinical trials, and harness AI for personalized customer experiences.
Life Sciences Cloud fills a critical gap by providing a trusted and secure platform equipped with robust CRM capabilities. With the majority of healthcare and life sciences organizations still striving to achieve their digital transformation objectives, Salesforce's initiative comes at a pivotal moment, offering integrated solutions powered by data, AI, and CRM to drive stronger stakeholder engagement across the entire R&D and commercialization lifecycle.
Pharma CRM is an engagement platform that will help pharma organizations interact with stakeholders using individualized correspondence and their medical-, legal-, and regulatory-approved digital content. This includes managing drug samples, capturing provider consent, and streamlining dosage inquiries across various channels.
In August 2023, Salesforce unveiled Starter, which marks a significant leap forward for small and growing businesses seeking to bolster their customer relationship management capabilities. Drawing on over two decades of Salesforce innovation, Starter offers guided onboarding, reporting templates, pre-built dashboards, unified customer data, and AI-driven insights. From generating leads through marketing campaign templates and segmentation to winning over customers with AI-powered activity capture and unified customer data, Starter equips SMBs with the tools needed to drive sales, enhance customer satisfaction, and cultivate personalized experiences across the board
In July 2023, Salesforce introduced the general availability of Sales Planning represents a significant advancement in the realm of Sales Cloud solutions, promising to streamline the process of building comprehensive plans fueled by CRM data. With Sales Planning, companies can now effectively drive growth by efficiently managing various aspects such as capacity distribution, territories, quotas, and compensation structures.
Traditionally, the sales planning process has been plagued by guesswork and obstacles, hindering companies from fully optimizing their go-to-market strategies. Salesforce's Sales Planning solution aims to address these challenges head-on, empowering organizations to navigate uncertainties with data-driven insights and strategic foresight, ultimately paving the way for more informed decision-making and sustainable growth trajectories.
In March 2023, Salesforce introduced Einstein GPT represents a significant advancement in CRM technology, leveraging generative AI to enhance every aspect of customer interactions across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT domains. For instance, sales reps can effortlessly generate personalized emails, customer service professionals can provide quicker responses, marketers can craft targeted campaigns, and developers can auto-generate code. With integration into all Salesforce clouds, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack, Einstein GPT signifies Salesforce's commitment to ushering in the AI future for its customers, emphasizing collaboration and efficiency in delivering exceptional customer experiences.
In June 2022 Salesforce's latest product enhancement, Sales Cloud Unlimited, is a testament to the company's commitment to driving efficiency and growth for sales organizations in an uncertain economic climate.
Sales Cloud Unlimited offers a unified platform equipped with AI, automation, and analytics capabilities, empowering sales teams to turn data into actionable insights and transform into trusted advisors for their clients.
Salesforce's introduced Salesforce Genie, in September 2022, represents a significant advancement in the realm of customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Notable industry leaders like Ford, L’Oreal, Formula 1, and PGA TOUR Superstore have already embraced Salesforce Genie to reimagine customer interactions, delivering real-time, personalized experiences at scale.

Salesforce Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Activities

In October 2023, Salesforce acquired Airkit.ai. Airkit.ai's expertise in developing AI-powered customer service applications aligns seamlessly with Salesforce's vision of empowering businesses to deliver flexible, omni-channel customer experiences. By integrating Airkit.ai's capabilities into Service, Sales, Marketing, and Commerce Clouds, Salesforce anticipates equipping its customers with enhanced tools to navigate the evolving landscape of AI-driven interactions.
Salesforce's recent acquisition of Troops.ai, finalized in July 2022, represents a strategic move aimed at bolstering its collaboration and revenue communication capabilities within the Salesforce ecosystem. As part of the Slack, a Salesforce company, Troops.ai will contribute its expertise in enhancing sales velocity, forecasting, visibility, and team collaboration across organizations.
By integrating Troops.ai's innovative solutions into its platform, Salesforce aims to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of customer engagement strategies, ultimately driving greater business success for its users. In April 2022, Salesforce acquired Phennecs marking a strategic move towards fortifying its position as a leader in data management and compliance solutions within the Salesforce ecosystem. The acquisition underscores Salesforce's unwavering commitment to prioritizing trust and security for its customers, as evidenced by its longstanding focus on making compliance a seamless part of the data lifecycle. Phennecs' capabilities directly into its platform, Salesforce aims to empower developers with enhanced tools and functionalities for managing data while ensuring robust security and privacy compliance measures are seamlessly integrated from the outset.
In July 2021, Salesforce completed its acquisition of the business communication platform Slack for $27.7 billion. Slack will serve as the new interface for Salesforce's Customer 360 platform. It will enable employees across different departments using different Salesforce clouds to communicate with each other through a single interface. This is Salesforce's largest acquisition ever, topping the $15.7 billion purchase of Tableau in 2019. Slack will continue to operate under the Slack brand, driving forward a continued focus on its mission, customers, and community.

Salesforce Customers in ARTW Customer Database

Leveraging a rigorous data-centric research methodology, APPS RUN THE WORLD asks the simple question: Who’s buying Salesforce applications and why? And we provide the answers – supported by decades of research – to our clients around the world. Our Customer database has over 100 data fields that detail company usage of Salesforce and other enterprise apps by function, customer size, industry, location, implementation status, partner involvement, Line of Business Key Stakeholders and IT decision makers contact details. List of Verified Salesforce Commerce Cloud Digital, Salesforce Community Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Quote-to-Cash, Service Cloud, Salesforce Wave Analytics, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Tableau customers.

Salesforce Key Enterprise and Cloud Applications

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Digital, Salesforce Community Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Quote-to-Cash, Service Cloud, Salesforce Wave Analytics, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Tableau

Salesforce Revenues, $M:

Salesforce Revenue Breakdown By Type, $M:

Salesforce Enterprise Applications Revenues By Functional Markets, $M:

Salesforce Enterprise Applications Revenues By Verticals, $M:

Salesforce Revenues By Region, $M

Salesforce Direct vs Indirect sales

Salesforce Customers - Breakdown by Geo, Size, Vertical and Product

List of Verified Salesforce Customers

No. of Salesforce Customers: 200000

No. of Salesforce Enterprise Applications Customers: 200000

No. of Salesforce Cloud Customers: 175000

No. of Salesforce Cloud Subscribers: Over 10 million

By acquiring Slack, Salesforce is not only bolstering its portfolio of enterprise applications and filling out its broader software suite as it seeks new areas of growth, it is directly adding over 130,000 paying customers.
The acquisition of Tableau added 86,000 customers to Salesforce's current base of 150,000 accounts. While there are overlaps between the two, it's fair to assume that the purchase will allow Salesforce to increase its wallet share among its clientele.
Additionally, the MuleSoft purchase has already added at least 1,200 customers, while the August 2018 deal to buy Datorama for its marketing intelligence products provided access to another 3,000 customers including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard, and Foursquare.
What's noteworthy is the size and evolution of Salesforce's installed base. Six years after its founding, Salesforce's customer count topped 10,000 in 2005, broke the 100,000 barrier in 2012, then set in at around 150,000 in 2015. After refraining from disclosing customer growth metrics for an extended period, Salesforce disclosed the current count of 150,000 when it announced its purchase of Tableau in June 2019. There has been 10% attrition among many of its customers coupled with changes in its approach by selling more through its ISV partners and third-party channels.
By contrast, both Oracle and SAP have been touting the steady growth of their installations from under 100,000 to a milestone of nearly 500,000 customers each over the past decade. The acquisition of Tableau underscores strategic shifts as Salesforce starts embracing the on-premise model while forging ahead to boost its wallet share and market reach by targeting hundreds of thousands of customers around the world.

Salesforce Market Opportunities, M&A and Geo Expansions

In June 2023 Salesforce unveiled AI Cloud marking a significant milestone in the CRM landscape, offering customers a cutting-edge suite of capabilities designed to elevate customer experiences and enhance company productivity through generative AI for the enterprise.
With AI Cloud, Salesforce aims to address concerns surrounding the adoption of generative AI by providing a trusted, open, and real-time platform tailored to meet enterprise data security and compliance demands. At the core of AI Cloud lies Einstein, the world's first AI for CRM, which now powers over 1 trillion predictions per week across Salesforce's applications.
Salesforce is building on its success in CRM with the acquisition and integration of Slack for the convergence of collaboration and all aspects of sales. One of the use cases is Deal Room where Salesforce users will be conducting in-depth discussions with other salespeople on deal approval, workflow, and other sales opportunities over Slack. Other enhancements include video and audio clip searches within Slack that allow for easier collaboration across structured and unstructured content.
Following the August launch of new Slack integrations across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Analytics (Tableau), in September 2021, Salesforce launched integrations across the majority of its products, including Commerce, Experience, Platform, Trailhead, MuleSoft, and Quip, and its industry clouds and products including Sustainability, Corporate and Investment Banking, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Philanthropy, Nonprofit, and Education. Salesforce intends to create a comprehensive modern workspace, that enables collaboration, communities, communications, CRM functionality, customer experience, and AI in an ecosystem that will welcome other integrations to extend enterprise functionality.
Salesforce's purchases of Tableau and Datorama are the latest examples of the CRM champion wanting to extend its reach into the data world by making it easier for its customers to better manage, manipulate, and visualize data. The Tableau purchase was easy to understand given Salesforce's heavy investment in Wave and later Einstein, all of which now form the basis of a slew of analytics and visualization tools for customers to drive better sales, eCommerce, marketing, and customer service and support outcomes.
The Datorama deal is meant to put all performance, outcome, and investment data sources that cover everything from online advertising to survey data all in one place in order to boost marketing intelligence, according to Ran Sarig, CEO of Datorama. In other words, it's another way for Salesforce to help customers harness the rich data sources they are confronted with every day through the use of algorithms. Datorama said its customers can unify hundreds of data sources into a single narrative for running better marketing campaigns for marketers, billing, and finance executives.
MuleSoft is another important investment by Salesforce. With MuleSoft, Salesforce now provides one of the world's leading platforms for building application networks that connect enterprise apps, data, and devices across any cloud and on-premise whether they connect with Salesforce or not.

Salesforce Risks and Challenges

In its 3QFY22 Slack contributed $280 million in revenues for the first full quarter after becoming part of the company in July. That was not much different from the $273 million in total revenues it reported when it ended its last reported period on April 30, 2021. In the prior quarter, Slack reported $251 million in revenues or a 9% sequential growth. The modest sequential growth in the latest quarter may stem from revenues not being recognized after the acquisition for accounting reasons. Salesforce also emphasized that Slack was included among the four out of the top 10 deals during the period. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44 percent in 3Q22 over 3Q21. What that suggests is that it will take a few more quarters before Slack becomes a catalyst for incremental growth. One inhibitor to growth lies in adding Slack to the Salesforce apps stack could backfire because of its intrusive nature with incessant pings and constant notifications. With increased use of AI and better personalization, it will not be long before Slack can prove itself to be indispensable to help boost productivity for Salesforce users.
Another challenge lies in the deceleration of Mulesoft disclosed during the 3QFY22, which could be a matter of concern as API integration remains one of the fastest-growing markets. Salesforce touted Mulesoft's progress just two months earlier with the highest current growth rate of 44% among its recently acquired properties. Similarly, rivals like Boomi, Celigo, and Jitterbit all reported robust results during the pandemic as Boomi was being spun off by Dell for about $4 billion. While the deceleration of Mulesoft may extend into FY23 given the nature of these mostly license-based integration projects, the big unknown is whether the slowdown would bleed into other Salesforce products, perhaps unwinding some of those bundle sales that drove its growth.
Salesforce is unfazed as it projects to log another 20% growth in its top line for fiscal 2023, a remarkable feat that only a few big software powerhouses like AWS and Microsoft Azure have been able to accomplish over the past few years. The question is whether Salesforce could ride another back-to-back 20%+ annual growth rate year after year without resorting to more big-ticket acquisitions as the number of moving parts continues to multiply across a sprawling product portfolio.
The explosive growth of Salesforce's Service Cloud underscores the transformation of the vendor as it relies more on selling log-in/member subscription fees, essentially monetizing the consumption of its content, data, and interactions between licensed users and anyone else who needs to access the systems.
Similarly, the acquisitions of Mulesoft and Tableau will bolster sales of Salesforce's API calls and dashboards, rendering the per-user per-month pricing model less impactful in the long run. The question is whether customers will push back on such transaction-based systems that are more procedural and routine from a toll taker, rather than from a software innovator like Salesforce.
The other risk facing Salesforce is its considerable exposure to the customer experience marketplace, which will have its reckoning in 2020 and beyond. While the meaning of customer experience will evolve even as the public health crisis comes to a close, the world of customer relationship management will change as well.
There is no easy answer for Salesforce, but the burden is now on the incumbent vendor that has pioneered Cloud CRM or fashioned itself as the Customer Company to help its users - particularly those in hospitality, travel, and retail sectors - not necessarily return to the old ways of serving and delighting customers, but rethink how best to stay relevant in the post-pandemic world.

Salesforce Ecosystem, Partners, Resellers and SI

Salesforce and McKinsey partnered on September 16, 2022, marking a significant milestone in the realm of digital transformation. By combining McKinsey's strategic insights and transformation capabilities with Salesforce's leading CRM platform, the alliance aims to address these evolving needs comprehensively.
Together, they have already delivered impactful solutions, such as a digital CapEx management solution for a European gas distribution leader and an AI solution for a global banking leader, resulting in increased productivity, improved decision-making, and enhanced customer experiences.
In August 2020, Abrigo launched Salesforce Platform API Integration to maximize relationship management at financial institutions. The integration with the Sageworks Lending and Credit Risk Solution. The integration with the Salesforce platform creates a centralized repository of borrower information, giving teams within the institution access to the same customer and loan data for faster customer service.
Salesforce is expanding in the UK in the Fall of 2020. The expansion will double the company's original commitment to train 500 people and will train an additional 500 people over the next three years to 1,000 total.
The Salesforce Military Alliance, an initiative of the Salesforce Military program, is aimed at accelerating the hiring of veterans and military spouses for Salesforce ecosystem roles. Through the alliance, Salesforce partners and customers commit to automatic interviews for any Salesforce Military member who earns an admin certification and/or commits to offering reskilling opportunities to their current veteran or military spouse employees through the Salesforce Military program.
Salesforce AppExchange, the world's leading enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies to sell, service, market, and engage in entirely new ways. With more than 4,000 solutions, over 7 million customer installs, and 90,000+ peer reviews, it is the most comprehensive source of cloud, mobile, social, IoT, analytics, and artificial intelligence technologies for businesses. The AppExchange includes 74 applications categorized for ERP. The evolving Salesforce ERP ecosystem remains a moving target. For example, Veeva, a long-time ERP Service and Operations Management ISV partner represents $500 million in sales for Salesforce under a 10-year deal through 2025.

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Research Methodology

Data used in research reports are derived from publicly available documents, continuous surveys of applications vendors, customers, resellers, Independent Software Vendors, systems integrators and other verifiable sources.

Vendor shares and market forecast results are based on a combination of existing databases as well as demand side and supply side research conducted throughout the year with validation from vendors, customers, channel partners and documentations such as earnings releases and 10Q and 10K filings, vertical industry studies, regional and country-level statistics from public and private institutions(i.e. colleges, universities, government agencies and trade associations).

For additional information on our methodologies, here's the link: