Aptly known as the “Customer Company,” Salesforce has a mission to build bridges between companies and customers, fostering meaningful connections that drive business success. Based in San Francisco, California, Salesforce is the global leader in customer relationship management (CRM) software. This Knowledge Leader recognizes that the business landscape is continually evolving, with new technologies and social trends emerging. However, one constant remains: the customer. Salesforce’s mission is to help businesses meet their customers where they are, ensuring they remain loyal to the company, come what may.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been vocal about the company’s market leadership and future growth ambitions. In a recent interview, Benioff highlighted the incipient artificial intelligence (AI) “supercycle,” describing the coming wave of generative AI as “more revolutionary than any technology innovation that’s come before in our lifetime, or maybe any lifetime.” He emphasized that every CEO realizes they’re going to have to invest in AI aggressively to remain competitive, and Salesforce aims to be their trusted partner in this endeavor.

The History of Salesforce: From a One-Bedroom Apartment to a Global Leader

Salesforce was founded in 1999 in a rented one-bedroom apartment on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, where Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez, and Dave Moellenhoff started working on the first version of Salesforce’s CRM. The team adopted a distinctive startup culture, focusing on what they believed was important and necessary, and doing it “fast, simple, and right the first time.” Their mantra was “No fluff.”

In its first year, Salesforce expanded to 40 employees and an 8,000-square-foot office at the Rincon Center. The company officially launched on February 7, 2000, at an event themed around “The End of Software” at San Francisco’s Regency Theater. By the end of 2000, Salesforce had 20% of its workforce laid off due to the dot-com bubble bursting, but the company managed to bounce back.

Salesforce’s growth was rapid and by 2001, it had expanded into the worldwide marketplace with headquarters in Dublin and Tokyo. The company surpassed 3,000 customers, making it the fastest-growing CRM company. By the end of 2002, Salesforce had 5,740 customers with 70,000 users in 107 countries accessing the service in multiple currencies and eight languages. Salesforce continued to innovate and in 2005, it introduced its AppExchange service, offering third-party developers a place to work on their own applications and open them up to Salesforce customers. By the end of the year, the company’s customer base stood at 20,500 worldwide, with nearly 400,000 unique users.

The company’s journey is marked by significant milestones, including the launch of Service Cloud in 2009, the acquisition of Heroku in 2010, the introduction of Salesforce Customer 360 in 2018, and the acquisition of Tableau in 2019. In 2020, Salesforce was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and in 2021, it completed the acquisition of Slack.

Salesforce’s Revolution in CRM

Salesforce’s first significant technological breakthrough was the development of a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management system. This innovation was a game-changer in the technology industry, marking the beginning of a new era in software delivery and data management.

Before Salesforce, businesses relied on on-premise software solutions for their CRM needs. These systems were often expensive, complex, and required significant IT resources to maintain. Salesforce disrupted this model by introducing a cloud-based CRM system, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes. This was a revolutionary shift, moving software and critical customer data to the internet and making it available as a subscription service.

The impact of this innovation was felt on a global scale. Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM system democratized access to technology, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to leverage the same tools as large corporations. This leveled the playing field and fostered competition, leading to better products and services for customers.

The transformation brought about by Salesforce’s innovation was profound. The company’s cloud-based CRM system set the stage for the widespread adoption of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Today, the SaaS model is ubiquitous, with businesses across industries relying on cloud-based software solutions for various operational needs.

Product Portfolio Today

Today’s the company product portfolio is extensive, covering a wide range of industries and business needs.

Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s flagship CRM platform that enables businesses to manage their sales, customer support, and marketing efforts. It provides tools for contact management, opportunity management, collaborative forecasting, and more.

Service Cloud is designed to support customer service efforts, providing tools for case management, service contract tracking, knowledge base management, and more. It helps businesses deliver faster, smarter, and more personalized service.

Marketing Cloud provides digital marketing tools, including email, mobile, social, advertising, web personalization, content creation and management, and data analysis.

Commerce Cloud helps businesses create seamless shopping experiences across all digital channels — mobile, social, web, and store.

Community Cloud allows businesses to create branded communities for their customers, partners, and employees to connect and collaborate.

Analytics Cloud provides business intelligence software for data exploration, creating interactive dashboards, and taking action on insights.

Salesforce Platform is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that allows developers to create and deploy custom applications on the Salesforce infrastructure.

Salesforce Industries are industry-specific solutions built on the Salesforce platform. They include clouds for government, health, education, energy & utilities, manufacturing, consumer goods, financial services, communication, media, non-profit organizations, and philanthropy.

Einstein is Salesforce’s AI technology, which is integrated into all of the company’s clouds. It uses machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, and natural language processing to help businesses make smarter decisions.

Salesforce’s unique strength lies in its ability to provide a 360-degree view of customers, enabling businesses to deliver personalized experiences across every touchpoint. Its products are designed to be easily customizable and scalable, making it a preferred choice for businesses of all sizes and across various industries.

Global Operations and Recognition

Salesforce’s global operations span across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific regions. In the Americas, Salesforce has a strong presence with its worldwide corporate headquarters located in San Francisco, California. Other significant locations in the United States include Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and New York, among others. In Canada, Salesforce operates from Toronto and Vancouver. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Salesforce has offices in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The company’s European operations are extensive, with offices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In the Middle East, Salesforce has a presence in Israel and the United Arab Emirates. In Africa, Salesforce operates in Morocco and South Africa. The Asia Pacific region is also well-represented, with Salesforce’s APAC Regional Headquarters located in Singapore. Other significant locations in the Asia Pacific include Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane), New Zealand, China (Beijing, Hong Kong), India (Bangalore, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Hyderabad), Japan, and Korea.

Salesforce’s global operations reflect its commitment to serving customers worldwide and its ability to adapt to different market needs. The company’s international expansion has been a key driver of its growth, enabling it to reach a broad customer base and establish a strong global presence.

As of now, Salesforce has thousands of employees worldwide, all working towards the company’s mission of helping businesses connect with their customers in new and innovative ways. The company’s global operations, coupled with its comprehensive product portfolio, have earned it recognition as a leader in the CRM industry.

Driving Innovation and Growth

Salesforce’s approach to R&D is characterized by a relentless focus on customer needs, a commitment to technological advancement, and a culture that encourages experimentation and learning. This attitude toward innovation is one of the company’s defining characteristics.

Salesforce’s R&D projects span a wide range of topics, reflecting the company’s diverse product portfolio and its ambition to lead in multiple areas of technology. One of the most promising areas of R&D at Salesforce is AI. The company’s AI research is focused on developing generative AI technologies that can help businesses automate tasks, gain insights from data, and deliver personalized experiences to customers. For example, Salesforce recently announced the availability and pricing for Sales GPT, Service GPT, and Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which are AI-powered applications designed to revolutionize customer service and sales.

Salesforce’s R&D activities are not limited to its home market. The company has a global network of innovation centers and R&D facilities, where it collaborates with local partners to develop solutions that meet the specific needs of different markets. These international R&D activities enable Salesforce to tap into global talent and ideas, and to stay at the forefront of technological advancement in the CRM industry.

Salesforce’s Trailblazing Innovations

Salesforce has been at the forefront of innovation in the CRM industry, with several significant product breakthroughs in the last five years. These innovations reflect the company’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology to deliver value to its customers.

Salesforce’s New Commerce Innovations (2023): Salesforce introduced new commerce innovations to unlock revenue streams across sales, service, and marketing. These innovations are designed to help businesses create seamless, personalized shopping experiences across all digital channels.

Salesforce GPT and Einstein GPT Trust Layer (2023): Salesforce announced the availability and pricing for Sales GPT, Service GPT, and Einstein GPT Trust Layer. These AI-powered applications are designed to revolutionize customer service and sales by automating tasks, generating customer-specific content, and writing code.

Salesforce’s AI Regulation Advancements (2023): Salesforce has been actively supporting AI regulation to advance digital trust and innovation. The company believes that a regulatory framework for AI can help ensure that the technology is used responsibly and ethically.

Upskilling for the AI Era (2023): Salesforce launched initiatives to empower teams to harness generative AI. The company believes that upskilling is critical for businesses to fully leverage the potential of AI and drive digital transformation.

Salesforce’s New Financial Services Innovations (2023): Salesforce introduced new innovations to help financial services institutions deliver personalized insights with AI, data, and CRM. These innovations are designed to help financial institutions better understand their customers and deliver personalized services.

Salesforce’s Journey into the Future

Salesforce has been a pioneer in the field of AI, incorporating AI into its products and launching ongoing AI projects that are set to shape the future of the company. The company’s AI initiatives are centered around Salesforce Einstein, a layer of intelligence within the Salesforce platform that delivers AI-powered predictions and recommendations to users.

One of the most significant AI initiatives by Salesforce is the launch of Einstein GPT, the world’s first generative AI for CRM. This technology leverages AI to create content across every sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT interaction, transforming every customer experience. Einstein GPT infuses Salesforce’s proprietary AI models with generative AI technology from an ecosystem of partners and real-time data from the Salesforce Data Cloud.

Einstein GPT can generate personalized emails for salespeople, specific responses for customer service professionals, targeted content for marketers, and auto-generate code for developers. This initiative is a testament to Salesforce’s commitment to leveraging AI to enhance productivity and customer experiences.

In addition to its own AI initiatives, Salesforce has also partnered with OpenAI to deliver relevant and trusted AI-generated content2. This partnership combines OpenAI’s enterprise-grade ChatGPT technology with Salesforce’s private AI models, further enhancing the capabilities of Salesforce’s AI initiatives.

Salesforce’s AI initiatives extend beyond its own products and services. The company has also launched a $250 million Generative AI Fund through Salesforce Ventures, its global investment arm. This fund will invest in high-potential startups, bolster the startup ecosystem, and spark the development of responsible, trusted, and generative AI.

Strategic Alliances

One of the company’s significant collaborations is with Rossignol, a renowned name in the sports industry. Rossignol has been leveraging Salesforce’s combination of trusted AI, data, and CRM to deliver personalized customer engagement for over a decade. The latest innovations from Salesforce, including Einstein GPT across marketing, commerce, and service, have been instrumental in driving greater efficiency, increasing productivity, and strengthening customer loyalty for Rossignol.

Another noteworthy partnership is with Typeface, a generative AI content platform. Salesforce’s Marketing GPT integrates with Typeface’s platform to create contextual visual assets for multi-channel campaigns based on specific brand voice, style guides, and messaging.

Salesforce has also joined forces with DEPT®, Media.Monks, NeuraFlash, and Slalom to build a generative AI ecosystem. These partners are developing new accelerators, large language and data models, and integrations to help businesses implement Salesforce’s Marketing GPT and Commerce GPT with less cost and complexity. Furthermore, Salesforce’s collaboration with the World Economic Forum has led to the launch of the 1t.org Canadian Chapter, aimed at boosting reforestation efforts.

These collaborations highlight Salesforce’s commitment to driving innovation and delivering personalized customer experiences through strategic partnerships.

This Knowledge Leader spotlight was generated using our AI engine with a series of prompts custom-developed by Knowledge Leaders Capital and designed to uncover the innovation strategies of companies we consider to be Knowledge Leaders. We have edited it for content, style, and length.

The following sources are examples of sources that may have been consulted in the preparation of this spotlight.

• Salesforce Official Website
• Marc Benioff’s dinner with ‘neighbor’ Sam Altman
• Salesforce – Wikipedia

As of 6/30/23, none of the securities mentioned were held in the Knowledge Leaders Strategy.

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