Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on New Software to Help Businesses Reopen

Marc Benioff, founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, joins CNBC's Jim Cramer to discuss the company's new initiatives to help businesses reopen.

Salesforce announced a new platform Monday intended to help businesses and leaders reopen safely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Salesforce is launching a slew of of tools under Work.com, which will allow employers to track employee health through surveys and organize employee shifts to maintain social distancing. It will also have a resource center with information from health experts and business leaders, such as the Business Roundtable and the University of California San Francisco. The company will introduce contact tracing to allow companies to reach out to those who were around a sick employee.

Salesforce told CNBC it won’t use a contact tracing platform created by Apple and Google.

“This manual contact tracing involves a health care professional contacting people via phone, email, text and taking someone through a series of questions that is logged in a contact tracing system,” Salesforce said. “Participating in the questionnaire is voluntary.”

“We are capturing the best advice, the best words from doctors and tremendous business organizations who are telling businesses of safe ways to reopen,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “When we go back to work there’s things we’re going to have to do differently.”

As a handful of states begin to reopen, some employers are questioning when it’s appropriate to bring workers back to the office. Benioff said that some businesses may decide to bring employees back to work while the virus is still spreading.

Companies likely will bring personal protective equipment into the workplace, continue social distancing and begin employee temperature checks as a way to slow the spread of the virus, he said.

“We can do things to help people be safer at the office,” Benioff added.

Salesforce said all of its tools will be available by June and will range in price.

More than 1.1 million coronavirus cases have been reported in the U.S. and at least 67,686 people have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.