Top Salesforce Acquisitions of All-Time-Updated 2021
Salesforce is growing at an inconceivably quick rate. The cloud computing company is on a quest to recognize gaps in their existing portfolio and fill them lightning fast.
In the year 2016, Salesforce has acquired 12 companies, focusing on building the platform of AI capabilities, known as Einstein. Since then, Salesforce has consistently made acquisitions across the diverse range, for years.
In this post, we will discuss the topmost acquisitions by price in Salesforce history.
Slack
Acquisition Date: Dec 1st, 2020
Purchase Price: $27.7B
Website: https://slack.com/intl/en-in/
One-line Pitch: As mentioned on Slack’s official website, “Make work-life simpler, more pleasant and more productive. Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get work done.”
Why did Salesforce buy them?
Salesforce has been looking to strengthen its vision for the social enterprise. In the past several years, the word acquisition has become the synonym of Salesforce figuratively. But, nothing had made this deal successful until now. This acquisition is the result of an increase in the demand for virtual sales and services, which are imperative in the present COVID-19 pandemic. This acquisition will also smoothen work from anywhere culture for businesses as well as users.
Tableau
Acquisition Date: Jun 10th, 2019
Purchase Price: $15.7B
Website: https://www.tableau.com/
One-line pitch: “[Tableau] make breakthrough products that change the way people use data.”
Why did Salesforce buy them?
Salesforce’s philosophy is to be the #1 in every category their ever-expanding platform covers.
It's nothing unexpected that the #1 analytics platform was on their wish list.
By acquiring Tableau, Salesforce plays an important role, because Einstein Analytics is regarded as a competitor of Tableau currently.
In their press release, Salesforce explicitly conveyed that “Tableau and Einstein together” – whether this will complement, or overshadow the current platform, we will have to see.
Mulesoft
Acquisition Date: Mar 20th, 2018
Purchase Price: $6.5B
Website: https://www.mulesoft.com/
One-line Pitch: “Mulesoft provides a software platform that enables organizations to easily build application networks using APIs…the digital glue that allows applications to talk to each other and exchange data.”
Why did Salesforce buy them?
This type of acquisition was unique in the Salesforce ecosystem. Mulesoft acquisition blew all previous acquisition in two ways:
The purchase price was more than double of the previous front-runner, Demandbase. Salesforce wants to abolish all possible hurdles that stand against the enterprise-level organizations to become Salesforce customers.
Mulesoft provides a platform to build API, which creates connectivity between middleware and back-office systems. They later expanded to iPaaS (Integration Platform As a Service).
Don't forget to check out: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio and Its Activities
Demandware
Acquisition Date: Jun 1, 2016
Purchase Price: $2.8B
Website: https://www.salesforce.com/products/commerce-cloud/overview/
One-line pitch: “Demandware provides enterprise cloud commerce solutions that empower the world’s leading retailers to continuously innovate.”
Why did Salesforce buy them?
Salesforce is the pinnacle of the B2B cloud software market, and always strives to conquer the B2C market, which is quite obvious.
Mix in their growing desire to get into front-end operations, Salesforce always wanted to quench its thirst to be a master of the B2C cloud software market.
Traditionally, retailers were never hooked on CRM, but Salesforce spotted the future need for 1-to-1 shopping experiences.
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 did Salesforce buy them?
After having full control of the post-sales and post services departments, Salesforce looked to expand in the pre-sales operations.
ExactTarget was running for 13 years before Salesforce acquired it. This product was so valuable to Salesforce that they are considering it as the backbone for the marketing suite. With this acquisition, Salesforce now positioned itself to both B2B and B2C prospects.
ClickSoftware
Acquisition Date: Aug 7th, 2019
Purchase Price: $1.35B
Website: https://www.salesforce.com/products/field-service/overview/?d=7010M000002NWHXQA4
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 is one of the pioneers in the service space. The company has been operational since 1997. Its’ team was highly involved in developing the Salesforce Field Service Lightning (FSL) product, which meant the acquisition meant to happen without any doubt.
Krux
Acquisition Date: Oct 3, 2016
Purchase Price: $800M
Website: https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/best-practices/lookalike-modeling/
One-line Pitch: Krux helps marketers, publishers and agencies drive revenue by delivering smarter content, commerce, and marketing experiences.
Why Salesforce bought them:
According to Forrester, programmatic digital advertising was the hot topic during 2016, and it is predicted that the market will have a massive increase of around 43% YOY* from 2015-2021.
Salesforce acquires the Krux to fill this missing space on the platform. Data Management Platforms use customer data & external sources of interaction data to optimize display adverts.
Quip
Acquisition Date: Aug 1, 2016
Purchase Price: $750M
Website: https://quip.com/
One-line pitch: “Quip is a living document platform that combines docs, spreadsheets, and communication to help teams get work done faster and smarter.”
Why Salesforce bought them:
Although document processing applications are entirely outdated but yet, they are user friendly. Salesforce always tried to fill this gap by giving users the functionality to store documents on Salesforce. This not only makes documents shareable but also contextual to whichever CRM record they’re related to.
By doing so, it will increase user satisfaction and dramatically help platform adoption.
Buddy Media
Acquisition Date: Jun 4, 2012
Purchase Price: $649M
Website: https://buddymediagroup.com/
One-line pitch: “Salesforce Buddy Media, a social media marketing platform, helps companies build connections and maintain relationships with customers.”
Why Salesforce bought them:
When social media was gaining popularity, Salesforce tried to offer social media management features to its customers.
Therefore, Salesforce tried to play an interesting move by bringing a social media tool into the market. It will motivate Salesforce customers to use CRM. Therefore, Salesforce makes a smart move to acquire buddy media.
Check out another amazing blog by Fexle Services here: What is Marketing Cloud? Know the Features and Benefits for Businesses
Acumen
Acquisition Date: 1st December 2020
Purchase Price: $27b
Why Salesforce bought them:
Industry leaders are calling this acquisition an unusual merger. Salesforce on its official blog stated the three most important reasons why the cloud-computing company has gone for this acquisition. The first reason is that Salesforce wants to spread its geographical presence. The second reason is that cloud-computing company is intended to create stronger relationships, and the third reason is that Salesforce was looking for skilled Salesforce professionals.
Summary
In the years to come, Salesforce will go for more acquisitions to provide its clients with a superior user experience. In this post, we have tried to cover the top Salesforce acquisitions by prices. We hope now you understand the origin of the Salesforce products that you all are using presently.
Source: SalesforceBen
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