Tag: salesforce

Salesforce accelerates in Europe

Posted on May 21, 2018 by - News

Screen shot 2013-12-18 at 5.32.27 PMSalesforce is introducing its Accelerate partner assistance programme to Europe.

Speaking to the assorted throngs at the outfit’s World Tour London event, Salesforce EMEA vice president of channel and alliances, Leon Mangan, said that the move would drive and accelerate partners who want to develop ISV solutions onto AppExchange.

He described it as a mentoring and coaching model where it will carry out webinars and workshops and give each of the partners a mentor.

The plan has been running in the US since  2016. Salesforce will take applications in batches, focusing on high-growth sectors, the first of which will be those developing apps for fintech and insurance.

The company sees Fintech and insurance as its most significant addressable market opportunity although other areas are expected to follow.

Interested partners can submit their applications for the programme at the end of June, but competition is likely to be tough as there are just 20 spots available. The schedule will start in September with individuals from different Salesforce departments volunteering to act as mentors.

 

Altify signs up for Salesforce Quip

Posted on March 27, 2018 by - News

indexAltify, whose customers include BT, GE and Sage, is using the integrated collaboration platform system Salesforce Quip in a cunning plan to enhance  collaboration and productivity of sales teams worldwide. Automation, AI and chatbots have transformed sales.

Altify is available on the Salesforce App Exchange, is empowering human front-line sales managers, enabling them to identify potential risks on upcoming deals, Deliver coaching notifications, Drive best practices created from centuries’ worth of sales experience.

Altify’s CEO, Anthony Reynolds said that Britain has suffered a steady decline in productivity since the Brexit referendum. Some are looking to technology to improve this. As always, sales teams are particularly focused on productivity and it is their sales productivity which ultimately will help the UK win or lose in the post-Brexit world.

“As seen by the Dropbox, Salesforce integration earlier this month, the lack of collaboration between sales pros using the top-selling Salesforce tool makes closing deals efficiently a bottleneck. To be fair, it is not their fault. Quite simply, salespeople work in silos because data is stored in silos. If only sales teams could access their data as easily as Cambridge Analytica can access Facebook’s, their productivity would soar”,  Reynolds said.

 

New Altify platform emerges

Posted on January 22, 2018 by - News, Products

Salesforce logoSalesforce users have just got an Altify Augmented Intelligence kick as the outfit revealed its new platform.

Altify’s Augmented Intelligence technology lets board executives be fully briefed on a deal within minutes and front-line sales teams have the latest coaching, the firm claims.

Altify uses AI to help them target the “decision makers” in a deal. Altify’s customers include General Electric, BT and Honeywell.

The new Winter 18 release is designed to help b2b sales leaders and their teams more “easily collaborate” with customers to improve win rates and sales velocity.

Altify’s Winter’18 enables sales teams to set up their account plans in minutes and get guidance on the right level of planning for every opportunity, while also providing more data and insight for sales leaders and front-line sales managers.

Peter Redfurn, Director, Global Enterprise Accounts at Johnson Controls said: “Altify’s Winter’18 release gives our sales leaders more insight, and it makes it easier for our sales teams to build plans and deliver value to our customers.”

Anthony Reynolds, CEO of Altify said that enterprise sales leaders understand that sales are a team sport.

“Our latest release gives sales leaders real insight on their key accounts and strategic opportunities, with the ease and simplicity of a solution to empower the entire extended team. Best of all, with our new plan set up, sales reps will spend less time planning, and more time in front of the customer.”

Altify’s Winter‘18 release  claims to give executives “total control” over account plans and sales deals, while also providing simplicity and an improved “user experience” that takes advantage of Salesforce’s Lightning platform. Altify, it’s claimed,  provides the only account management and opportunity management stuff that is built natively on the Salesforce platform. The release, it reckons, allows  for opportunities and account plans to be easily configured, so people only see what they need based on account size or the complicated stuff in deals.

Salesforce partners need some education

Posted on November 9, 2017 by - News

PinkFloydTheWall1Salesforce has announced that it will give partner status points for training completed on its Trailhead developer and administrator online training platform.

The news was announced during its Dreamforce event in San Francisco.  Normally Salesforce awards partner status – Gold, Silver or Platinum – based on certifications, using a point-based system.

Salesforce says that in the new fiscal year, the vendor will start awarding points for Trailhead training.

Salesforce also rolled out myTrailhead, which allows businesses to add personal branding and content, including customised onboarding lessons and company-specific enablement skills, to Trailhead.

All this is geared for channel partners so that they can create their own internal learning environments. Salesforce’s channel partners have struggled to keep up with Salesforce technology and updates, particularly now that Salesforce wants to release more software to its  customers annually.

Salesforce wants Trailhead to be  a “global learning platform” and enhancing it with content geared toward partners.

Salesforce slags off rivals for abandoning CRM

Posted on August 24, 2017 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has slagged off his CRM competitors for doing “a horrible job” which has cleared the way for his outfit to make a fortune.

The cloudy software vendor saw its revenue for the three months ending 31 July jump 26 per cent year on year to $2.56 billion – making it the first enterprise software company to hit $10 billion,.

However that would not have been possible, claimed Benioff, if Salesforce’s CRM rivals had not “abandoned” the CRM market.

“When you’re in enterprise software you have to realise, its hard work [and] not everything is going to be perfect all the time – there is going to be problems,” he said. “That’s why being so committed to the customer is more important than ever.

“I have to say our competitors have really done a horrible job in last few years. I just would say that a lot of them have abandoned the CRM market.

“If you talk to the major CRM analysts, and we do that, we just had one of them at our management conference, they are shocked. We’re shocked at how these companies have really walked out of the CRM market. Companies that had huge multibillion dollar positions in the CRM have conceded that market to us.”

Benioff said the actions of others in the market has created an “exciting” opportunity for Salesforce and its chums.

Vlocity Insurance and Salesforce score Vlocity client

Posted on July 11, 2017 by - News

Ominous Clouds over Dublin CityCloudy outfit Vlocity has announced today that the UK’s Azur has chosen Vlocity Insurance and Salesforce to further improve customer engagement and satisfaction for brokers and their clients.

Vlocity Insurance is built on the Salesforce platform and Azur wants the tech to engage with policyholders across multiple environments.

Azur cuts transaction chain inefficiencies by using technology solutions that disrupt expensive, inflexible legacy systems. By using Vlocity Insurance’s industry-specific and omnichannel capabilities built on the Salesforce platform, Azur can tailor broker and policyholder management processes.

Azur founder and CEO Graham Elliot said that Azur wanted to change the broker and policyholder experience by pushing outside of industry norms and bringing in new technology to disrupt the status quo.

“With Vlocity Insurance and Salesforce, we have a more complete picture of how we are measuring against this goal because all the necessary systems are in one easily navigable platform built on insurance industry standards.”

Salesforce Global Head of Insurance Jeff To said that the partnership between Vlocity and Salesforce provides agility and insurance industry depth to the customer interactions that Azur requires.

Using Vlocity’s industry cloud software, Azur has configured a multi-line underwriting system that enables content marketing engagement, broker on-boarding, quote and bind, documentation, claims handling, mid-term adjustments, and core system of record functions with all of the data in one place. Vlocity Insurance also eases the transition of legacy insurance systems and historical documentation to the cloud by connecting and integrating with current systems of record.

Microsoft takes on Salesforce with LinkedIn data

Posted on April 25, 2017 by - News

microsoft-in-chinaSoftware King of the World, Microsoft, is rolling out upgrades to its sales software using data from LinkedIn.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the cunning plan was central to the company’s long-term strategy for building specialised business software.

The move means improving Vole’s sales software Dynamics 365, so it can take on market leader Salesforce.com.  It is the first thing to come out of Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, the business-focused social network.

The new features will comb through a salesperson’s email, calendar and LinkedIn relationships to help gauge how warm their relationship is with a potential customer.

The system will recommend ways to save an at-risk deal, like calling in a co-worker who is connected to a potential customer on LinkedIn.

“The artificial intelligence, or AI, capabilities of the software would be central. I want to be able to democratize AI so that any customer using these products is able to, in fact, take their own data and load it into AI for themselves,” Nadella said.

LinkedIn has 500 million members globally, one of the first big milestones for the business social network since its acquisition.

Salesforce doing better than expected

Posted on November 18, 2016 by - News

 

Salesforce forecastSalesforce_Logo_2009 current-quarter revenue above what the cocaine nose-jobs of Wall Street predicted.

Deferred revenue, a key metric for subscription-based software businesses, rose 23 percent to $3.50 billion in the third quarter. Analysts on average had expected deferred revenue of $3.42 billion. For the current quarter, Salesforce said it expected revenue of $2.27 billion to $2.28 billion, above analysts’ average estimate of $2.24 billion.

Revenue rose 25.3 percent to $2.14 billion. Analysts had expected revenue of $2.12 billion. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said that Salesforce was expecting to deliver its first $10 billion-year during our fiscal year 2018.

The more optimistic predictions were due to closing deals for its cloud-based sales and marketing software with several new major customers.

Salesforce has consistently reported double-digit growth in recent quarters as companies shift to cheaper and easier cloud-based products, but it is facing growing competition from Oracle and Microsoft.

The results marked a sharp reversal from the previous quarter, when a lighter-than-expected revenue forecast prompted concerns about slowing growth. But this quarter the company closed large deals with customers including Citigroup and Amazon to help it get back on track.

Benioff wants to broaden the company’s cloud offerings through new features, especially focusing on artificial intelligence.

The company, which launched its artificial intelligence platform Einstein this year, has made several acquisitions to build up its machine learning and big data analysis power.

However, competition between Microsoft and Salesforce is now intensifying and Microsoft’s Dynamics product is taking business from Salesforce among mid-sized customers. Microsoft also this summer launched a direct competitor to Salesforce’s AppExchange for business software.

 

Salesforce wants to bring AI to the channel

Posted on November 17, 2016 by - News

robotsWhile most channel partners might not be too interested in AI trends, Salesforce has a cunning plan to use the concept to spice up its partner relationship management software.

Salesforce’s PRM software, which is delivered as a service, uses an Einstein AI engine that the software outfit thinks could change the way the channel is run.

At the moment, PRM applications are loaded with data about customer transactions, but sorting through all that data to make the best optimal decision is laborious. Einstein is supposed to instantly identify what combination of products and services will, for example, yield the most profit for them.

Channel management teams can identify what partners make the best use of marketing development funds (MDFs) or have higher customer satisfaction ratings with a specific product or technology.

This means that the vendor can better identify when a customer is most likely to upgrade an existing product or service.

While this will not mean the end of the days where a nice lunch would improve vendor standing, it will mean that sales teams will come to the table with some good facts about what the client wants.

The technology is still limited AI technologies start to cut both ways in the channel. Instead of a PRM application, there will inevitably be a vendor relationship management (VRM) application infused with AI capabilities. Solution providers would then be able to instantly compare which vendor in a category, such as servers and storage, is providing them with the best deal at a given time.

Salesforce says Twitter Ye Not

Posted on October 17, 2016 by - News

frankie-loopmasters1Salesforce has said it has given up on its plans to buy social notworking site Twitter.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told the Financial Times his company has “walked away” from cutting a deal and he was pretty much the last one left.

Neither Google nor Disney plan to bid on Twitter, despite reports saying both were interested. Apple is long gone and Verizon immediately launghed off the speculation.

Facebook was said to be uninterested, and someone mentioned Microsoft but then realised that it made no sense for Vole which is becoming an increasingly enterprise-focused company.

This is going to put pressure on the social notworking site to work out a way to restart user growth and improve its revenue.

Twitter will update investors on its earnings again two weeks from now, on 27 October and it’s likely the company will either address or be asked about where any acquisition talks go from here.

Salesforce wants watchdogs to split up Microsoft and LinkedIn

Posted on September 30, 2016 by - News

dog-on-bed-with-people-no-text-590x388Salesforce has called on EU regulators to investigate antitrust issues related to Microsoft’s $26 billion bid for social network LinkedIn.

Vole is expected to seek EU antitrust approval in the coming weeks for its largest ever deal and Salesforce, which missed out on the sale is complaining.

It has asked competition authorities to go beyond a simple review, saying the deal threatens innovation and competition.

Burke Norton, Salesforce’s chief legal officer, said in a statement said that by gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.

“Salesforce believes this raises significant antitrust and data privacy issues that need to be fully scrutinized by competition and data privacy authorities in the United States and in the European Union,” he said.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, said in a statement: “Salesforce may not be aware, but the deal has already been cleared to close in the United States, Canada, and Brazil. We’re committed to continuing to work to bring price competition to a CRM market in which Salesforce is the dominant participant charging customers higher prices today.”

The European Commission’s preliminary review of merger deals lasts 25 working days, which can be extended by about four months if it has serious concerns.

Cisco and Salesforce team up on Internet of Things

Posted on September 23, 2016 by - News

Cisco Kid Cisco and Salesforce are combining their Internet of Things and unified communications technologies in a cunning plan to provide joint offerings to drive channel sales in the new markets.

The networking giant will co-develop and co-market new joint offerings that combine its platforms in collaboration, IoT and contact center with Salesforce Sales Cloud, IoT Cloud and Service Cloud offerings.

Under the cunning plan Cisco Spark and WebEx will be integrated into Salesforce’s Cloud and Service Cloud. Combining these two technologies will allow customers to communicate in real time using chat, video and voice without leaving Salesforce or having to install a plug-in.

Cisco’s Jasper IoT platform, which it bought in its $1.4 billion acquisition of Jasper Technologies earlier this year – will be integrated with Salesforce’s IoT Cloud. Cisco said the joint offerings will empower organisations to quickly and cost-effectively use billions of IoT data points and provide businesses with a more comprehensive view of their IoT services.

Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of the IoT and Applications Groups at Cisco said that Cisco and Salesforce were coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive.

The alliance will also combine Cisco’s Unified Contact Centre Enterprise and Salesforce Service Cloud to help customers manage call centres more efficiently, according to a release.

Salesforce in shopping frenzy

Posted on August 17, 2016 by - News

2390E7EB00000578-2853540-image-49_1417209296708Salesforce is carrying on its “shop until you drop” policy and made its fourth acquisition since June.

The outfit has written a cheque for business analytics provider BeyondCore.  It is not saying how many zeros it wrote on the cheque.

For those who came in late, BeyondCore examines data sets using pattern-recognition technology using its own algorithms that combine machine learning and regression analysis.

It is not a big outfit, It has 15 stuff and it was founded in 2004.  Its cash came from $9m in funding. Salesforce became interested when it came up with a plug-in to connect to its cloud.

Writing in its bog, BeyondCore wrote it would be “uniquely positioned” to further magnify its impact on analytics as part of Salesforce’s Analytics Cloud.

The deal would extend “smart data discovery and advanced analytics capabilities across the entire Salesforce Customer Success Platform,” BeyondCore said.

Salesforce’s just bought the Microsoft-Office-like suite Quip for $750m stock and cash earlier in August and the ecommerce platform Demandware for $2.8bn in cash.

While most people are at a beach it appears that Salesforce is keen to carry on its shopping frenzy.

Ellison believes SaaS market is a key to the cloud

Posted on June 20, 2016 by - News

Larry EllisonAlthough he is not backward about coming forward at the best of times, Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison has been talking up his outfit’s Cloud business lately, claiming it is doing rather well because if its SaaS presence.

Ellison claims Oracle’s cloud business is “defying conventional wisdom” by accelerating while it expands and this is because of its presence in the SaaS market where rivals are not competing.

“We think we have a fighting chance to be the first SaaS company to make it to $10 billion in annual revenue,” Ellison said.

Oracle is a number two SaaS vendor and had a total SaaS and PaaS revenue of $2.2 billion during fiscal 2016, up 49 percent from the year before. The top SaaS vendor, Salesforce made $6.67 billion in 2016 and expects its 2017 revenue to be $8.08 billion.

Public cloud IaaS leader Amazon Web Services said in April that it’s on track to hit $10 billion in revenue this year.

The cloud accounted for around eight percent of Oracle’s quarterly revenue, but this business to continue growing even faster in Oracle’s fiscal 2017.

Ellison also said Oracle is seeing “a huge amount of demand” for IaaS from its existing SaaS and database customers, which wish to avoid the data migration costs associated with AWS and other cloud vendors.

Oracle has made significant data centre efficiency advancements and can now offer lower costs, better security and superior reliability than any other provider in the market, he added.

 

Salesforce demands Demandware

Posted on June 2, 2016 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Cloudy Salesforce has written a $2.8 billion cheque for Demandware whose software is used by businesses to run e-commerce websites.

The move is part of a cunning plan to open a new front as Salesforce wants to take more market share from traditional software providers such as Oracle and SAP who offer cloud-based e-commerce services.

The e-commerce market has been growing  as retailers expand their online presence, boosting demand for software that helps manage functions such as payment processing and inventory management.

Salesforce appears to have paid rather a lot for the company to see off any of the other outfits which were bidding for the company. Word on the street is that Adobe and Oracle were also snuffling around.

Demandware has not been doing that well. Its shares, which have fallen about 21 percent in the past year. Its customers include Lands’ End, L’Oreal (because it is worth it) and Marks and Sparks. It has  reported sales growth of more than 30 percent for the last 10 quarters.

While Salesforce has beaten up everyone in the CRM war, it still needs to stay in front.  To do that it needs lots of products which is something it lacks.

Global spending on digital commerce platforms is expected to grow over 14 percent annually to about $8.5 billion by 2020, Salesforce.

The deal, slated to close in Salesforce’s second quarter ending July, is expected to increase the company’s 2017 revenue by about $100 million-$120 million.

Salesforce had forecast fiscal 2017 revenue of $8.16 billion-$8.20 billion in May.