Salesforce reported its third-quarter results on Thursday, with numbers that well exceeded analysts' expectations. Of more interest to many customers than the dollars and cents is Salesforce's broader strategic plans, which company executives discussed on a conference call. Here are the key highlights (h/t to Seeking Alpha for the transcript):
It Takes A Village: And a rather sizable one, at that. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the company's "global community" of "customers, consumers, citizens, partners and employees" now totals 1 billion people. This growth is being driving by an increasing number of large deals; Salesforce had its highest-ever total of seven-figure deals in the quarter, Benioff said. Salesforce had particular luck with financial services, signing agreements with seven large U.S. players in the quarter, said president Keith Block.
One of those, with PNC Bank, will "reimagine the banking experience for 11 million customers," Block said. One question is whether Salesforce can continue to win the business and customer satisfaction of small and medium-sized companies as it continues going upmarket.
Wither Einstein: Maybe it was just an oversight, but Benioff failed to answer part of a question posed by one analyst on the call, namely when Salesforce's much-hyped Einstein AI technology will be generally available.
AI, artificial intelligence where everything is getting just smarter and is helping all these users to actually point the direction of success. ... And of course Einstein is a huge part of it and you’re going to see Einstein of course deeply integrated in everything that we do. And customers get that Einstein is different than other AI solutions.
CRM Reaccelerates: Salesforce's core CRM or Sales Cloud software is its first and hence most mature product segment. Yet growth in the segment improved during Q3 to 13 percent. Benioff said that Salesforce sold more CRM software in the quarter than Microsoft has "in the past decade," a claim that wasn't immediately verifiable.
SIs Feasting on Salesforce Ecosystem: Some of the world's larger systems integrators are heading toward the $1 billion revenue mark for their Salesforce practices, Benioff said. Block added some additional detail:
These SIs are in the boardroom along with us and they are key influencers. In fact Marc, you and I have presented to a quite a few with their boards. Now, I don’t believe that Microsoft or SAP or Oracle are being asked to present in the boards of these incredible SIs. So, it’s a big part of our strategy. If you look at their growth and their practices, I mean they are exploding. And they can’t get enough talent.
A Tokyo Surprise?: Benioff mentioned that he'll be in Tokyo in three weeks and teased a surprise announcement:
Please come and see, for those of you who still have not come to Japan. You really should come and see something incredible in Tokyo that we have in three weeks. And then for those of you who don’t want to go Tokyo in three weeks, we’re going to be back here in New York for a multi-thousand person event, which is our world tour. So, that’s so exciting. The world tour, Tokyo and San Francisco are on the same day for all the types of purposes.
Election Fallout: Donald Trump's election as U.S. president also came up on the call. Benioff struck a confident tone regarding it:
Look, some of us many not have had the outcome that we want, some of us have the outcome we did want. In my view, it’s in the past. ... yes, everything is changing but we have a beginners mind and we have a sense of optimism for the future and we’re going to cultivate that optimism and we ‘re going to manifest it into our business ... I have talked to now a number of customers this week, and I have met with CEOs of some of largest companies in the world this week. And in each and every case, all of them are moving forward, okay?
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