Salesforce has been on a shopping spree over the last few years. We all read quite frequently about Salesforce acquisitions. They are quick enough to realize the gaps in their products and fill them by acquiring companies who complement their products.

Salesforce has acquired 66 companies so far and them acquiring Slack recently was all over the news. In this blog, we will cover top acquisitions, their purchase price and the reason why it was acquired.

Noteworthy Salesforce Acquisition

Below is an infographic about notable Salesforce acquisitions since 2006.

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1. Slack Acquisition

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In light of the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020. Salesforce acquired Slack to meet the demands of the virtual working world. In order to cater to the needs of work from home, collaboration software is a must. There could be no better fit than workplace chat App – Slack.

“This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes.”  – Marc Benoiff, CEO of Salesforce

When – Dec 1, 2020

Price – $27.7B

Salesforce Customer 360 and Slack is expected to create a new way of working for companies. Slack will transform how employees communicate with each other, care about customers as a whole in this digital world. Slack’s open platform opens opportunities for Salesforce as well, they can integrate with 2400+ applications.

2. Mobify Acquisition

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Salesforce acquired headless commerce tech firm called Mobify. Mobify was founded back in 2007 and has been partners with Salesforce for years. They specialize in providing headless commerce technology (which relies on APIs heavily) to customize e-commerce website and applications.  

Delivering a great digital customer experience is more important than ever. Global Digital commerce revenue grew by unpredictable 71% in Q2 when compared to previous year.

“Mobify will provide Salesforce Commerce Cloud with a modern storefront solution that will allow brands to customize their commerce experiences,” said Mobify CEO Igor Faletski.

When  – Sep 6, 2020

Price – $60M

Salesforce understood this very quick and made a clever move of acquiring Mobify in 2020. Mobify has a digital storefront solution and other technologies that facilitates design, creation of front-end solutions for your customers

3. Vlocity Acquisition

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Vlocity and Salesforce have been partners for long. They have built many industry-specific solutions on top of the Salesforce CRM solution including financial services, health, non-profits, etc.

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“In our relationship with Vlocity and the way that we originally invested in the company, it created a situation for acquisition that we needed to take advantage of and which is why we have acquired it at a very attractive price because we have been partners with them from the very beginning” said Marc Benoiff, CEO of Salesforce

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When  – Feb 25, 2020

Price – $1.3B

Salesforce also acquired CMO Club in March this year. Together they will provide a community, a digital platform, events for marketers to stay connected.

4. Tableau Acquisition

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One of the famous Salesforce acquisitions amongst a chain of acquisitions in 2019 is Tableau. Though Einstein and Tableau were considered as competitors, Salesforce still went and acquired Tableau.

Tableau’s analytics platform enables people with even no data analytics skills to work with data. Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform already provides a single source of truth. Tableau will complement and make the Customer 360 platform stronger.  

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“Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, and that’s why we’ve never been more committed to delivering powerful analytics to every user,” said Keith Block, co-CEO, Salesforce

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When  – June 10, 2019

Price – $15.7B

Salesforce would provide deeper insights with Tableau which will help users to make smarter decisions and offer the best customer experience possible.

5. MuleSoft Acquisition

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Mulesoft is an integration platform which connects SaaS, enterprise applications. It’s been a year and a half since Salesforce acquired MuleSoft. In Dreamforce 2020, Mulesoft announced a new set of features for Salesforce.  

They have come up with accelerators which anybody could use to connect systems. You need not be a developer or an integration specialist. They have also released Einstein Automate, an AI-powered workflow builder.

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“Our team is excited about accelerating MuleSoft’s mission to connect any application, data and device by building innovative products that enable our customers’ continued success,” said Greg Schott, CEO of MuleSoft

When  – March 20, 2018

Price – $6,5B

MuleSoft will transform into Salesforce Integration cloud in the near future.

6. Click Acquisition

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ClickSoftware was already involved in Salesforce Field Service product. It will enable organizations to schedule, optimize the field agent’s work.

This Salesforce acquisition was done to position Salesforce as a leader in Field Service capabilities. Companies must become smarter and engage their customers, offer the customer service in a personalized way.

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“Our mission has been clear since the beginning—to be the global leader in field service management and deliver significant value to our customers. Joining Salesforce provides a tremendous opportunity to accelerate this vision,” said Mark Cattini, CEO of ClickSoftware

When  – August 7, 2019

Price – $1.35B

ClickSoftware and Field Service Lightning together can work smarter.  Let’s say a field service agent is stuck in traffic, another agent can attend and the routing can be handled by a dispatcher. Ultimately customer’s appointment does not get delayed. All these are recorded inside Salesforce and everyone in the company has complete visibility over this.

7. Quip Acquisition

Quip is a real-time document collaboration tool. After Salesforce acquired it, it is integrated into Sales and Service cloud. You should see a new tab for Quip where your sales, service team can collaborate and maintain all documents at one place.

“By bringing productivity directly into the context of business workflows, sales and customer support teams can collaborate in brand new ways, enabling them to be better aligned and more efficient, ultimately providing a better customer experience,” said Alan Lepofsky, VP of Salesforce Quip

When  – August 1, 2016

Price – $750M

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8. ExactTarget Acquisition

Salesforce Marketing Cloud had boosted it’s automation and digital marketing capabilities after ExactTarget acquisition by Salesforce. ExactTarget was already used by many consumer brands before the time of acquisition. These customers after the acquisition and new ones were able to leverage the capabilities of Salesforce Sales cloud, marketing capabilities of ExactTarget altogether.

When  – June 4, 2013

Price – $2.5B

Final Thoughts

This post covered recent and top Salesforce acquisitions. Few other notable acquisitions include Demandware, Krux, Buddy Media etc.

Salesforce over the years has been quick in identifying what’s missing in their native products and fixing them by acquiring the best-in-class products, companies. If you have any queries regarding any of the Salesforce products, our experts at CloudIdeas are happy to answer.

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