Today, the leading CRM maker Salesforce has declared its Q1 Fiscal 2021 results. It earned $4.87 billion revenue– 30% higher YoY and reported first-quarter operating cash flow of $1.86 billion. This Salesforce Q1 earning update was never going to be just the monies. But, it’s much more beyond doing merely business… And, Salesforce demonstrated its leadership stance even as various businesses are struggling to maintain stability with their pace, people and projections.

COVID-19 was always going to be the talking point of this announcement. Salesforce too got hit, even as it managed to offer safety to employees and secure their loyalty, courtesy its pre-emptive HR and employee welfare policies, which over years have been closely associated with its ability to execute operations at pace, innovate at scale, and manage partnerships with ease.

At the time of this announcement, Marc Benioff, Chair & CEO, Salesforce said–

“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 imperative for every company, and we’re confident Salesforce will continue to accelerate as we bring our customers into the new normal.”

Here are some of the most remarkable achievements for Salesforce in Q1 2021.

• Appointed Gavin Patterson President and Chief Revenue Officer. Patterson joined Salesforce in 2019 as Chair of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA),
• Launched Salesforce Care
• Created the Tableau Data Hub
• Developed online leadership programs like Leading Through Change (garnering over 75 million views) and launched B-Well Together for employees
• Provided temporary financial flexibility to COVID-19 hit customers
• Offered one-time assured sales commission for the Q1 to Sales Team
• 100% Work from Home operations, with 0% travel
• No significant layoffs for the first 90 days of the pandemic
• Committed to no significant layoffs for the first 90 days of the crisis
• Declared 100% virtual events
• Donated 7.5M in grants; sourced more than 50 million units of PPE to hospitals in COVID-19 hit countries.

During this Q1 2021, Salesforce announced some remarkable stability, continuing with its innovation. It launched Work.com. Work.com is a 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.

Salesforce Driving AT&T’s Digital Transformation into 5G Era

Earlier, Salesforce announced AT&T selected the Salesforce Customer 360 to create a single view of every customer across every touchpoint. Salesforce CRM would drive real-time customer engagement across virtual storefront, over the phone, in a business setting or on any AT&T digital property. With Salesforce, AT&T is on a fast-paced road to broaden its digital transformation to accelerate momentum in wireless, 5G, fiber-fed broadband and software-delivered entertainment.

Salesforce Q1 Earning 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.

AT&T will utilize Salesforce’s entire portfolio of technology, including

• Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to empower their retail associates with a 360-degree view of every customer interaction;
• MuleSoft to connect their various back-end systems; Tableau to analyze data and better understand customers’ preferences;
• Salesforce Einstein AI to serve more intelligent and personalized recommendations and route support cases; and,
• Salesforce professional services, which when combined with Salesforce Customer 360, will accelerate AT&T’s customer experience vision.

“AT&T is in the business of connecting customers to the world around them and to the premium content they love,” said Jeff McElfresh, Chief Executive Officer, AT&T Communications.

Jeff added, “Salesforce 360 will help us amplify the benefits of connectivity services for our customers and deliver the most highly-tailored and best cross-channel experience ever.”

Salesforce has been a leader in providing solutions in response to the current situation that helps 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.”

What E-Commerce Means For Their Company

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?’…”

Salesforce Work.com Adds Vision to Workday’s HR and Finance Cloud Offerings

Earlier, Salesforce and Workday announced a key partnership to enable joint customers in finance and HR domains to forge ahead in their plans to safely return to work.

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.

Pete Schlampp, EVP Products at Workday said “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.”

Andy added, “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.”

Earlier, Salesforce was recognized as the Leading CRM provider for the 7^th consecutive time by IDC. It continued to be positioned as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multi-channel Marketing Hub 2020.

At the time of his appointment, Gavin Patterson, President and CEO of Salesforce International said,

“In the months ahead, we will remain focused on helping our customers recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, deploying our technology and enabling them to re-open their businesses and communities safely. Our world-class sales organization is built for moments like this, being a trusted advisor able to deliver the full power of Salesforce to help make our customers successful.”