Salesforce, a global company in the CRM sector, continues to grow again and present good results, also consolidating its numbers in Spain and Portugal, which even exceed the company’s figures. Salesforce, which presented the results of its fiscal year 2022 (closing on January 31) on March 1, presents a global increase in its sales of 25% to reach a turnover of 26,490 million dollars, with Spain growing at a good rhythm. Enrique de Polo Lara, Vice President and Country Leader of Salesforce in Spainexplains in this regard “Within Europe, it is the southern zone, which includes France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, which is showing the greatest dynamism. We are, without a doubt, one of the global Salesforce engines”.
On press conference held in Madrid, the North American company explained that it plans to direct its local strategy towards four main axes. First of all, Salesforce will look to expand its presence in medium-sized companies. “Most of the large Spanish companies, including almost all of the IBEX 35, are already Salesforce customers”, indicated the Enrique Polo de Lara. “Without a doubt, we will continue to maintain our focus on that market and strengthen our strategic relationship based on innovation with large companies. But, in addition, we see that at the next level, medium-sized companies, we have a great business opportunity”.
The second axis, related to the previous one, is reinforce commercial activity in different territories of the Spanish geography. Salesforce has a strong commercial presence in Madrid and Barcelona (in addition to the delegation in Portugal, which began its activity as its own entity a year and a half ago). The company seeks to expand its activity in territories such as Valencia and the Basque Country, where there are a significant number of medium-sized companies, without neglecting other areas such as Andalusia, Galicia, etc. To achieve this goal, Salesforce will promote, as a third strategic line, the role of its partner ecosystem, increasing its role and expanding the possibilities of reselling licenses.
The Salesforce Ecosystem
“Throughout fiscal year 2023, a selected group of partners will join the group of resellers that already sell licenses and, in this way, can increase their business with Salesforce”, he comments Ana Vertedor, Vice President of Alliances and Channel of Salesforce Iberia. “This will boost both the generation of wealth in the ecosystem and the penetration of Salesforce in the market.”. Ana Vertedor recalled that, according to data from the latest IDC report on the Salesforce Economy, 73,800 jobs related to the technology company will be created in Spain by 2026, with revenue generation of 19,070 million euros and that local partners will gain 5.48 euros for each euro that Salesforce earns, according to the consultancy.
Finally, the fourth pillar will consist of deepening the organization by industries. The company already announced last year that it was reorganizing its commercial structure to align the sales and support organization to the specific needs of clients, as well as creating a specialized business unit for the public sector. This strategy is complemented by the development of products and solutions. Currently, Salesforce already has 12 specific clouds for different industries.
Innovation
When it comes to solution development, Salesforce has made some notable changes in recent months. On the one hand, the company has updated its entire portfolio of business applications (Salesforce Customer 360) to progressively integrate them with the Slack collaborative work solution, acquired by the company in 2021. “With this ‘Slack First’ approach, we are making it easier for companies to build their digital headquarters”, he explained Pau Contreras, Vice President of Salesforce Solution Engineering in Spain and Portugal. “In this way, organizations can face the challenges posed by the change in the work model and the digital imperative”.
Contreras also highlighted the recent addition to the Salesforce portfolio of the solution Safety Cloudwhich takes advantage of the company’s own experience in events and workplaces and incorporates innovations in health and safety, helping companies to better manage their tests and health protocols at work.
Finally, the manager indicated that sustainability has become one of the fundamental values of Salesforce. The company, which since September 2021 is a Net Zero company (zero emissions) throughout its value chain, having managed to supply itself in a 100% renewable energy in all its operations, has launched the solution Net Zero Cloud, which aims to help other companies achieve the same goal and become sustainable companies, facilitating the measurement and traceability of the carbon footprint of organizations.
Social responsability
Company executives emphasized Salesforce’s commitment to positive change to build a fairer society. For this, the company has designed the 1-1-1 model, by which it donates 1% of its capital and 1% of its solutions to NGOs and foundations, while its employees can dedicate 1% of their time to I work on projects of social interest.
In the case of Spain, this means that nearly 200 NGOs use Salesforce technology and that employees in Spain and Portugal have dedicated a total of 10,000 hours of volunteer work in more than 1,700 social projects. These projects are articulated through groups of volunteers such as Salesforce Women’s Networkwhich works for the empowerment and professional development of women, Outforcewith projects aimed at the LGTBI collective, earth forcewith environmental projects, Geneforce, to facilitate the integration of the different professional generations, vetforce, with projects aimed at veterans of the Armed Forces, family members and orphans, BOLDforce, which supports an educational project at St. Martins College in Kenya and latinoforce, to foster Latino talent in the organization.
The social action has been complemented with specific actions such as fundraising to provide bicycles to secondary schools in Senegal, a support campaign for those affected by the La Palma volcano eruption and donations of more than 40,000 kilos of products to the Food Bank for families at risk.