Salesforce – Revenue Growth in Full Swing [5 Reading Tips]

These are reading tips, not investment tips – and no maths class for fifth graders either. We will get to both later though. Since these are reading tips, we refer to other texts worth reading – to this one from the deepest SPIEGEL ONLINE archives, for example, which was published in 2003. Such a long time ago!

The article portrays the CEO of the »hottest start-up« from Silicon Valley at the time, a company that was worth investing in: Salesforce’s Marc Benioff. One of the central passages of the SPIEGEL article goes as follows: »›Wir sind gute Verkäufer‹, sagt Benioff mit dem ihm eigenen Mangel an Bescheidenheit und versucht dabei, nicht zu grinsen.« (»›We are good salespeople,‹ Benioff says with his characteristic lack of modesty, trying not to grin.«) The quintessence of the article: Salesforce offers unusual marketing strategies for what is basically fairly standard customer relationship management software. The only new feature: it does not have to be installed but is a web-based solution. Only?

Salesforce – From Insider Tip to Tech Giant in Less Than Two Decades

18 years later: Salesforce is no longer a start-up. Salesforce is one of the largest and, above all, one of the highest-revenue tech companies in the world. In 2003, Salesforce generated $100 million in annual revenue.

In 2020, the company once again increased its revenue – as compared to the previous year – by 24 per cent to $21.25 billion. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, Benioff stepped in front of the microphones on the 27th of May and said: »We had the best first quarter in our company’s history.« This means that the revenue generated between February and April grew by another 23 per cent to $5.96 billion. The company’s profits even rose to $469 million, up from $99 million in the same period last year.

Writing out such figures and placing the correct number of zeros is something you learn in the lower grades of a secondary school. Fifth-grade maths using the example of Salesforce, impressive:

Year	Revenue
2003	$100,000,000
2020	$21,250,000,000

Period	Profit
February to April 2020	$99,000,000
February to April 2021	$469,000,000

Bare figures are one thing, but interpreting them is another. The software company SAP recently also disclosed an impressive development in figures. However, Salesforce is still growing a little more strongly. Mind-blowing figures aside: what makes our partner so successful?

Salesforce – Boost by Working from Home and Smart Acquisitions

Salesforce is the industry leader in customer relationship management software. Unlike SAP, the company does not rely on on-premise solutions, i.e. locally hosted software, but exclusively on the cloud.

This has long paid off, but the Corona crisis caused this model to go through the roof because the pandemic forced employees from countless companies to work remotely. The trend towards working from home meant that companies had to give their employees access to all relevant data even outside the office, which – as we all know – is much easier with cloud-based software than with a data centre in the basement of the company’s headquarters.

In addition, Salesforce has not only made spectacular acquisitions in recent decades, but also ingenious ones, especially in view of deteriorating working environments in the age of COVID-19, and integrated them into its own corporate universe. These include, speaking of integration, the iPaaS platform MuleSoft for efficient interface management and the instant messaging service Slack, which is a popular alternative to chat services such as Teams, especially in the USA, and is used very frequently in times of remote working.

Salesforce – From Parties to No-Code Platform

Be it 2003 or 2021: Salesforce’s marketing is still setting standards. Marc Benioff makes a name for himself as a philanthropist with a high public profile. If there were no real innovations, however, the effect of the stylish parties would fizzle out just as quickly as the entertaining Trailblazer workshops and the generous culture of donations.

The idea of having the software manufacturer handle not only the hosting, but also everything related to service and maintenance, i.e. offering an SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform, continues to set the pace.

The Salesforce portfolio, which includes a wide range of systems, is structured according to the low-code or even no-code principle. This means that you do not have to be a traditional programmer to become a Salesforce expert and to set up, configure and implement the products of the Californian software manufacturer and make them usable for companies in everyday business. Is there anything that would be more constructive in addressing the shortage of skilled labour and the need for companies to digitalise their business as quickly as possible in times of a pandemic?

Do you want to know why your Salesforce project is in the right hands with us? You can find all the answers here.