Doing What it Does Best “It Instills Confidence”: Salesforce Q1 Earning Update

Salesforce has just announced that it’s first-quarter revenue of $4.87 Billion. Salesforce Q1 Earning is up 30% Year-Over-Year, 31% in Constant Currency.

Our results, amidst this global crisis, demonstrated our ability to execute at speed, innovate at scale and the strength of our business model,”  said Marc Benioff, Chair & CEO, Salesforce. “We made long-term investments in keeping our employees safe, supporting our customers, delivering crucial innovation like Work.com, and helping our communities with PPE, grants, and technology. The pandemic showed us that digital is an imperative for every company, and we’re confident Salesforce will continue to accelerate as we bring our customers into the new normal.”

In response to COVID-19, Salesforce took the following actions in its fiscal first quarter to invest in its customers, employees and community during this unprecedented time, and to prepare for the future:

·       Launched Salesforce Care, a set of free rapid response solutions to help companies stay connected to their employees, customers and partners during the COVID-19 crisis

·       Created the Tableau Data Hub, a free resource to help companies and governments around the world see and understand data about the pandemic

·       Developed an online leadership program called Leading Through Change. The program highlights the work Salesforce customers have been doing during the crisis and has over 75 million views to date

·       Provided customers most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic temporary financial flexibility

·       Gave certainty to its sales team with a one-time guaranteed commission for the first quarter

·       Directed its global workforce to work from home and cancelled all business travel by employees for the foreseeable future

·       Committed to no significant layoffs for the first 90 days of the crisis

·       Launched B-Well Together for employees, a series focused on aligning the mind and body with leading well-being experts. Based on global demand, the company opened it to the public

·       Shifted customer, industry, and employee events to virtual-only experiences for the remainder of 2020

·       Donated more than $7.5M in grants to organizations on the front lines of the crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Israel, Italy, Spain, France and Germany

·       Sourced more than 50 million units of PPE, such as masks, gowns, suits, and face shields for hospitals in the US, U.K., India and France

Salesforce continues to invest in its stakeholders. In the second fiscal quarter, the company introduced Work.com, new technology solutions and resources to help business and community leaders around the world reopen safely, re-skill employees and respond efficiently on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work.com has generated enormous interest from businesses and governments and deepened partnerships with the world’s top system integrators and technology partners. For example, Workday recently announced that it will integrate its employee data directly into Work.com to make it easier for employers to centralize critical data and get their businesses up and running again.

Workday announced plans to further integrate Workday and Salesforce to enable joint customers to forge ahead in their plans to safely return to work.

The companies will offer integrated solutions between Workday, the source of truth for real-time worker information and skills insights for today’s dynamic workforce, and Salesforce’s Work.com, an all-new suite of applications and advisory resources to help business and community leaders around the world reopen safely. The pairing will equip joint customers with rich, timely insights and tools to help them manage their workforce as businesses move further into a reopening strategy in the face of COVID-19.

A Partnership to Support Evolving Workforce and Workplace Needs

As organizations move further into returning to work, they are looking for new ways to foster a data-driven culture built around better understanding, protecting, and driving productivity of a more distributed workforce as COVID-19 redefines how and where work gets done. This, in combination with the need to adhere to ever-changing regulations, requires trusted partners and solutions to foster cross-organizational collaboration, drive smart decisions quickly, and communicate to workers and beyond at scale.

With the integrated solutions between Workday and Salesforce’s Work.com, customers will be able to synchronize critical worker and skills data from Workday, including that from the powerful Workday Skills Cloud ontology, with Work.com’s safety, health, and workplace information. The companies plan to deliver future solutions that will help customers:

Prepare and Protect the Workplace

As organizations look to reopen, they will be able to assess site readiness and track regional health considerations to make critical data-driven decisions such as whether office space reconfiguration can accommodate social distancing requirements or evaluate and manage personal protective equipment inventory. They also will be able to more safely assign and deploy workers to the appropriate sites while staying informed about local health and safety regulations.

Safeguard and Support the Workforce

Customers looking at bringing their workforce back to the office may also assess worker location preferences or viability by health-screening, and determine ongoing employee eligibility based on health and safety training completion. Additionally, they will be able to create a phased approach to bringing workers back based on other factors such as criticality, shift management, and location capacity. This can all be done while protecting the safety of workers onsite and at home with solutions to manually trace health and relationship contacts in a safe and private manner.

Prepare for the Changing World of Work

As customers look to the future, they can identify the skills they have and will need, and will be able to determine where they have the best opportunities to upskill and reskill their workforce – ultimately deploying talent when, where, and how required to meet evolving business needs.

Commentary from Craig Traxler, co-founder and principal at Avionos:

“With budget cuts, limited access to buyers and changes in customer priorities as their normal operations are affected by the shutdown, COVID-19 has created headwinds for most B2B businesses, including the enterprise technology sector. With all of that in mind, it will be interesting to see how the Salesforce business is affected, especially with the true impact of the coronavirus not being seen until further in the future. The SaaS subscription model will help them weather the storm.

Salesforce has been a leader in providing solutions in response to the current situation that help reduce the impact businesses are experiencing. They’re helping the public sector with analysis and response efforts around COVID-19. Through their announcement of work.com, Salesforce is helping customers manage their internal workforce return to work as a “new normal” emerges. They’ve accelerated their customers’ digital transformation by leveraging the advantages of the cloud model and their partners’ ability to rapidly deploy eCommerce on their technology.”

Commentary from Andy Van Solkema, VP of Digital Strategy and Experience at OST

“Prior to COVID-19, from last fall to mid-February, Salesforce was on a growth path. To me, that signals a lot of organizations were beginning to leverage new CRMs and integrate them into their organizations. Their rebound may have to do with organizations starting to reprioritize and overhaul their enterprise software environments. One thing we’re seeing is companies re-evaluating what e-commerce means for their company, especially from a consumer standpoint. If you’re a consumer product company and sold it in stores before versus now selling it online, your e-commerce and how it connects with your CRM is a question you’re asking: ‘Should we prioritize dollars for that?’

Additionally, amid COVID-19, Salesforce has pivoted quickly to spin up new initiatives and partnerships that could help to mitigate any impact on its core cloud offerings. I think this has been a large factor in helping Salesforce continue to compete amid an ever-changing tech landscape. It has allowed them to have flexibility at the fringe of their customers and consistency with their operating business today.”

“Organizations require an incredible amount of workforce insight to build a return to work strategy and quickly tackle the twists and turns that will come with it in our changing world,” said Pete Schlampp, executive vice president, products, Workday. “Combining the data in Workday with the Work.com toolset is a powerful pairing. The result will be an integrated solution set that we believe delivers what HR leaders need to lead in the current environment – more intelligence and trusted systems to make decisions that unlock the potential of the workforce in entirely new ways.”

“Organizations worldwide are grappling with how and when to return to work — and they are turning to data to make safe, smart decisions. Yet, pulling together multiple data streams — like employee skills, employee wellness, cleaning schedules, regional health info — can be complex and time consuming,” said Bret Taylor, President and COO, Salesforce. “By integrating Workday employee data directly into Work.com, we’re making it easier for employers to centralize critical data and get their businesses up and running again.”