Salesforce Acquisitions can turn the way you and your business work into something incredible. The ease of the tasks and the accuracy of each report makes a big difference!
We originally published this post at the top of February 2018, and it became outdated within a month. What does this tell us?
That Salesforce is growing at an incredibly fast rate – recognising a niche in their native portfolio, and filling it lightning fast.
Anyone within the Salesforce Ecosystem would pinpoint 2016 because the year for acquisition mania.
Salesforce Acquisitions of All-Time
In one year alone, Salesforce snapped up 12 companies, largely to create out the platform’s AI capabilities, referred to as the ‘Einstein’ brand.
However, many aren’t aware that Salesforce has been consistently making variety of acquisitions for years, across a various range.
This post covers the highest 8 acquisitions by price across Salesforce’s history, consistent with Crunchbase.
Now, it’s time to reflect on why these former companies justified their price, and to what extent they need been assimilated into the Salesforce product.
1-Salesforce Tableau Acquisitions
- Acquisition Date: Jun 10th, 2019
- Purchase Price: $15.7B
One-line Pitch: “[Tableau] make breakthrough products that change the way people use data.”
Why Salesforce bought them: Salesforce’s ethos is to be the #1 in every category their ever-expanding platform covers.
It’s no surprise then, that the #1 analytics platform was on their list . The announcement did raise eyebrows, however, as Einstein Analytics is considered a competitor of Tableau currently.
In their handout , Salesforce explicitly stated “Tableau and Einstein together” – whether this may complement, or overshadow the present platform, we’ll need to see.
Each have strengths where the opposite lacks, which makes for interesting speculation with Salesforce’s next move.
Where are they now? Cloud Tableau be the new drive towards Salesforce’s Customer 360 vision?
Tableau featured within the Opening Keynote at Dreamforce ‘19 under a replacement name “Customer 360 Analytics”.
Tableau got many stage-time at Dreamforce, with numerous sessions, keynote mentions, and booth space.
2-Salesforce Acquisitions – MULESOFT
- Acquisition Date: Mar 20th, 2018
- Purchase Price: $6.5B
One-line Pitch: “Mulesoft provide a software platform that permits organizations to simply build application networks using APIs…the digital glue that permits applications to speak to every other and exchange data.”
Why Salesforce bought them:
We hadn’t seen anything like this before within the Salesforce Ecosystem. The Mulesoft acquisition blew all previous acquisitions out of the water in two respects; not only was the acquisition price quite double that of the previous front-runner (Demandbase), it marked the new direction Salesforce are heading for.
Salesforce want to eliminate all possible blockages which will stand between enterprise-level organisations and becoming Salesforce customers.
These organisations weren’t born within the cloud, and still have an important legacy IT infrastructure; what I mean by this is often older, on-premise software are still within the mix that require to be connected to Salesforce or other SaaS products.
In some cases, sticking to legacy and integrating is a smaller amount risky and fewer costly than migrating. this is often where Mulesoft comes in.
Mulesoft have an ‘API-led approach to connectivity’, and began off by offering middleware to attach back-office systems. They later expanded to iPaaS (Integration Platform As a Service).
Where are they now?
It was announced that Mulesoft will transform into ‘Integration Cloud’, where customer are going to be ready to “easily map and manage systems for an entire view of knowledge , devices, and apps”.
According to Salesforce: “additional Salesforce Integration Cloud products are going to be announced later this year and pricing for every feature of Integration Cloud are going to be announced because it is formed generally available”.
It’ll be interesting to ascertain if Integration Cloud will remain focused on enterprise-level, or have a price point for the SMB market. we’ll need to cling to .
In the meantime, inspect the Trailhead DX Keynote.
3-Salesforce Acquisitions – Demandware
- Acquisition Date: Jun 1, 2016
- Purchase Price: $2.8B
One-line Pitch: “Demandware provides enterprise cloud commerce solutions that empower the world’s leading retailers to continuously innovate.”
Why Salesforce bought them:
Salesforce had mastered the B2B cloud software market, and yet, always had the taste for the B2C market, naturally.
Mix in their growing desire to infiltrate front-end operations, and you’ll see why E-commerce quenched their thirst – the missing piece of the puzzle for B2C customer engagement.
Traditionally, retailers were never fixated over CRM, but Salesforce spotted the longer term need for 1-to-1 shopping experiences.
Demandware had capitalised on a data-driven world with high consumer expectations; however, the worth was likely justified by the well-engineered product and Demandware’s existing enterprise customer base.
Where are they now?
Demandware became Commerce Cloud very quickly, grabbing the eye of next-generation retailers who want an end to disparate data sources.
Commerce Cloud offers ‘omnichannel commerce’, that is, a seamless retail experience across the growing number of digital and physical engagement channels, including web, social, mobile, store, et al.
Commerce Cloud caters to e-commerce holistically, with a ‘single source of truth’ too all processes across marketing, shopping, order fulfillment and customer service – all with predictive intelligence.
4-Salesforce Acquisitions – ExactTarget
- Acquisition Date: Jun 4, 2013
- Purchase Price: $2.5B
One-line Pitch: “ExactTarget provides on-demand one-to-one email marketing software applications.”
Why Salesforce bought them:
After conquering the sales and repair (post-sales) departments, Salesforce looked to expand within the pre-sales direction. subsequent logical step was Marketing.
ExactTarget were a 2000-strong organisation, running 13 years pre-acquisition. the merchandise was the great , robust foundation Salesforce was seeking because the backbone for his or her enterprise Marketing suite.
Additionally , ExactTarget had acquired Pardot 6 months previously – now ready to position themselves to both B2B and B2C prospects.
It’s funny to read TechCrunch’s observations following the ExactTarget-Pardot announcement: “it puts ExactTarget into a far better position against the likes of Salesforce.” (TechCrunch).
Where are they now?
Clearly, Marketing Cloud was boosted with the addition of ExactTarget’s core Marketing Automation capabilities, specifically around email marketing.
Marketing Cloud, now split into 7 products, may be a beast – in terms of its all-encompassing, multichannel functionality.
Marketers can cover email, SMS, social, digital advertising and more with the merchandise suite. The user experience is very engaging and has that ‘wow’ factor, particularly with Journey Builder and Einstein Smart Splits.
And Pardot? Pardot is growing from strength to strength quarterly . Originally targeted at the SMB market, the investment in development has paid off; now Pardot has attracted a powerful enterprise-level client base, with the likes of Amazon and Stanley Black & Decker in its portfolio.
In 2014, they acquired 1,128 new customers during a single month (3x their previous acquisition rate), making it the fastest-growing marketing automation system on the market.
Salesforce pack up all of Pardot’s other CRM connectors mid-2017, tactfully Salesforce CRM is that the sole option.
5-Salesforce Acquisitions – ClickSoftware
- Acquisition Date: Aug 7th, 2019
- Purchase Price: $1.35B
One-line Pitch: “ClickSoftware improves the efficiency and effectiveness of field service organizations and mobile workforces. Real-time operational intelligence delivers real business value.”
Why Salesforce bought them: ClickSoftware are around for several years (1997) as pioneers within the field service space.
The ClickSoftware team were heavily involved in developing the Salesforce Field Service Lightning (FSL) product, which meant the acquisition was only a matter of your time – not an ‘if’ but ‘when’.
Where are they now? Salesforce FSL has been approaching in leaps and bounds recently (a product that has been within the market since 2016) – a few of our writers have projected an enormous influx in FSL projects coming in 2020.
The Field Service Lightning Keynote at Dreamforce ‘19 hinted that since the acquisition, ‘major investments’ are made in advanced scheduling and site technology (the latter because of Salesforce Maps, formerly the MapAnything application).
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