Previously we looked at the elaborated marketing strategy of Microsoft, the world’s leading software application provider. Now, let us hop over and look at the elaborated SWOT Analysis of Salesforce.
Salesforce is the world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. They help your marketing, sales, commerce, service and IT teams work as one from anywhere, so you can keep your customers happy everywhere.
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Want to see how Salesforce has succeeded in the software industry? In this blog, you will learn about the SWOT analysis of Salesforce. Before we get started, learn more about Salesforce‘s company, how it was established, its products, financial position, and its competitors.
About Salesforce
Salesforce is a US-based developer and seller of enterprise applications, analytics, and customer service software products. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by 4 founders named Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez.
In June 2004, it requested a US$110 million listing on the New York Stock Exchange with the stock symbol CRM. The same year, Salesforce got founding members of Geneva Venture Partners as its investors, a company that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to support sales teams. The company reported revenue of $21.25 billion in 2021.
Salesforce is now managing the analytics tool of Facebook and partnered with Apple intended on enhancing apps for Apple’s businesses. Salesforce products and services are focused on providing tools for customer relationship management, analytics, mobile apps, sales using social media marketing, content management, lead generation, web analytics, search engine optimization, live chat, and customer support.
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| Founder | Marc Benioff & 3 Others |
|---|---|
| Year Founded | 1999 |
| Origin | California, U.S. |
| No. of Employees | 56,606+ |
| Company Type | Public |
| Market Cap | $224.88 Billion (2021) |
| Annual Revenue | $21.25 Billion (2021) |
| Net Income/ Profit | $4.07 Billion (2021) |
Products & Services by Salesforce
Salesforce has been in the Software industry for more than a decade and deals in
- Cloud Computing
- CRM
- Application development
- Analytics
- Sales
Competitors of Salesforce
The top 5 competitors of Salesforce are:
- Pipedrive
- Keap
- Freshsales
- HubSpot CRM
- ActiveCampaign
As now we have a better understanding of Salesforce, let’s look into the SWOT Analysis of Salesforce.
SWOT Analysis of Salesforce
A SWOT analysis identifies a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A proven and true management paradigm that allows Salesforce to compare its business and performance with competitors and the industry as a whole.
So let us go ahead and first have a glance at the strengths of Salesforce from the SWOT analysis of Salesforce.
Strengths of Salesforce
As one of the leading companies in the industry, Salesforce, Inc. It has numerous strengths that make it stand out in the market. These strengths not only help protect your market share in existing markets but also help you penetrate new markets.
- Strong Free Cash Flow: There is a strong free cash flow that puts resources into the hands of the company to expand into new projects.
- Good ROI: It is relatively successful in new projects and provides a high return on capital expenditures through the creation of new revenue streams.
- Strong Brand Portfolio: Over the years Salesforce has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. This brand portfolio can be very useful if an organization wants to expand into new product categories.
- Outstanding Performance in New Markets: Salesforce has accumulated experience to enter new markets and achieve success. The expansion has helped organizations create new revenue streams and diversify business cycle risks in the markets in which they operate.
- Highly Skilled Labor: Highly skilled workforce through successful education and training programs. By investing enormous resources in the training and development of Salesforce employees, they not only create highly qualified employees but also motivate them to achieve more.
- Mergers and Acquisitions: A track record of successfully integrating additional companies through mergers and acquisitions. Over the past few years, he has successfully integrated several technology companies to optimize operations and establish a stable supply chain.
Weaknesses of Salesforce
Strategy is all about choices and weaknesses are areas where companies can improve through SWOT analysis and leverage their competitive advantage and strategic positioning.
- More Investment is Needed in New Technologies: Given the scale of the expansion and the multiple geographic regions in which the company will expand, Salesforce overall integrating processes requires more money to be invested in technology. Current investments in technology are not aligned with the company’s vision.
- Financial Planning is Not Being Performed Properly and Efficiently: The liquid asset ratio and liquidity ratio indicate that a company can use its cash more efficiently than it currently is.
- High Labour Outflow: Higher dropout rates compared to other organizations in the industry, Salesforce, and have to spend significantly more on employee training and development than their competitors.
- Not Very Successful in Integrating Companies with Different Work Cultures: As mentioned earlier, Salesforce is successful at integrating small companies. It has its share of failures to merge firms that have different work cultures.
- High Competition: The daily stock is high compared to its competitors, so the company has to raise more capital to invest in the channel. This could affect the long-term growth of Salesforce.
- Product Marketing: Although the product is successful in terms of sales, its positioning and unique selling proposition are not clearly defined, making it vulnerable to attack from competitors in this sector.
Opportunities for Salesforce
Opportunities are potential areas for companies to focus on to improve results, increase sales, and ultimately profit.
- New Environmental Policy: New opportunities will create a level playing field for everyone in the industry. This is a great opportunity for Salesforce, Inc. to realize the benefits of new technologies and gain market share in new product categories.
- New Taxation Policy: New tax policies can have a significant impact on the way Salesforce does business and open up new opportunities for them to increase its profitability.
- Open New Markets Through Government Agreements: New technology standards and government free trade agreements provided to Salesforce opens up opportunities for Salesforce to enter newly developed markets.
- New Customers Through Online Channels: The company has invested huge amounts of money in its online platform over the past few years. This investment opened up a new sales channel for Salesforce. Over the next few years, companies will be able to seize this opportunity by better understanding their customers and meeting their needs through big data analytics.
- Economic Recovery: Economic recovery and rising consumer spending after years of recession and slow industrial growth are opportunities for Salesforce to attract new customers and increase market share.
Threats to Salesforce
Threats are environmental factors that can harm a company’s development. Here are some of Salesforce’s threats:
- Legal Actions: The Company may face legal action in other markets given the continuing fluctuations in different laws and product standards in those markets.
- Fierce Competition: Strong profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over the past two years, putting downward pressure on overall revenue as well as profitability.
- Liability Laws: Vary from country to country Salesforce may face a variety of liability claims as a result of these market policy changes.
- Quantitative Increases in Commodities: This could jeopardize Salesforce’s profitability. A shortage of skilled labour in certain global markets threatens Salesforce’s continued earnings growth in the market.
- Operates Globally: Because the company operates in many countries, it is exposed to currency fluctuations, especially given the unstable political environment in many markets around the world. This may face some challenges in the market and may result in some losses as well.
This ends our elaborative SWOT analysis of Salesforce. Let us conclude our learning below.
To Conclude
Salesforce is a well-known software company with significant global positions. During the SWOT analysis of Salesforce, we found that the company is highly dependent and enjoys strong brand awareness and trust from its customers. It has a solid logistic base and covers all markets it serves, but suffers from more active research and development from an increasing number of manufacturers and competitors in the same space.
But being such a huge brand across multiple countries, Salesforce should continue to innovate and develop more products and launch them in the market with the best possible marketing strategies.
Especially digital marketing which is vital in today’s growing and expanding world, to get better results and to remain competitive in the market. If you don’t have any idea of what digital marketing is or want to learn more about it and upgrade yourself, here is IIDE’s 3 Month Advanced Online Digital Marketing Course to know more.
We hope this blog on the SWOT analysis of Salesforce has given you a good insight into the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
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