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ExactTarget Buy Bolsters Salesforce
Salesforce revenues were up 31% year over year, and this was boosted slightly by the ExactTarget July closing, Jillian Mirandi, an analyst from Technology Business Research wrote in a note to clients. Salesforce is expecting growth rates in the high 20s to low 30 percent range based on its subscription model revenues, new customers across the US and western Europe, and less customer churn.
The steady revenues should also be helped along by the recent announcement of a premium priced product called Salesforce Performance Edition. The US$ 300 per month per user package will combine Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Salesforce Platform with Data.com, Work.com and Salesforce Identity into one suite in an attempt to help organizations grow even faster, Mirandi noted. Performance Edition goes live in November.
Bundling of its expanding roster of services is one of the Salesforce strategies that should help it maintain it's own high growth, Mirandi wrote, and its reliance more on partner driven sales should also help as it move away from the more expensive direct sales personnel.
Salesforce's Maturing Strategy
Salesforce hasn't turned a profit since 2010, but if its aggressive sales tactics trail off in favor of a more mature strategy of cross selling and bundling of services, it can get there again, Mirandi wrote. Furthermore, it's predicted the company will expand more into developer tools, particularly for Force.com as Salesforce focuses more on government customers.
Proof for this can be found in the 2012 buy of Prior Knowledge, a developer focused tool. This will help Salesforce appeal more to developers, and that should help boost the company's mobile app capabilities, Mirandi noted. Another area where Salesforce is lagging a bit is in analytics, a situation that could be exacerbated by competitors Oracle and SAP's continued investing in that space.
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