Backed by tremendous growth in the market and enterprises India’s growth, speed and innovation, Salesforce has doubled down and made India a key focus with an aim to empower Indian organizations to tap growth through numerous initiatives like customer-centric digital transformation, vertical alignment, skilling programs and an SMB market focus.
From an overall CRM growth point of view, how was the calendar year 2018 from a global and India market perspective?
The CRM industry has changed considerably over the past decade. Cloud services are now standard. Globally, CRM market potential is projected to be $82B by 2025 and growing at 12% annually (Seeking Alpha). Salesforce has been the #1 CRM provider for the fifth consecutive year by IDC. Salesforce grew its overall market share position and increased its revenue more than any other CRM vendor.
Today, every company wants to deliver connected customer experiences across channels and departments. Even SMB enterprises have realized the importance of customer relationships and that technology enables them to chart a more effective growth path. Therefore, companies are increasingly turning to Salesforce to accelerate their digital transformation journey to deliver intelligent and connected customer experiences across every touch point.
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“As enterprises look to take advantage of the inherent value of digital, we are uniquely positioned to turn this objective into reality by helping customers in India become disrupters by using Salesforce to put customers at the heart of their businesses.”
Sunil Jose
Senior Area Vice President and Country Leader
Salesforce India
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How was Salesforce performance for this calendar year from a global as well as India perspective?
In the enterprise software industry, we were the fastest to achieve revenue of $10 billion. We are in a peak performance mode as each company that we’re dealing with is going through a huge digital transformation. Global Revenue growth in Q3FY19 grew 26% YOY in constant currency.
India is one of the fastest growing regions for the company and we’ve grown more than double year-on-year. India will continue to be a key market for us. We have been able to transform businesses of all sizes, across segments, leading them into their next phase of customer success.
What activities you did which differentiated you from competition and helped increase market share?
Our business in India has never been stronger. India is home to some of the best technology talent in the world and is known for its incredible innovation. It has even recently surpassed the U.S. in largest amount of Internet users. This growth, speed and innovation made us want to double down and make India a key focus for the company.
Our focus areas through the year have been Customer-centric digital transformation to drive business value, growth and success for our customers, Vertical alignment to accelerate our focus on innovation across key industries, creating an ecosystem of trailblazers, Skilling through Trailhead with a combination of instructor-led offerings from Salesforce University and self-guided learning from Trailhead — the interactive, gamified, hands-on learning platform that empowers anyone to learn new skills. By 2022 the Salesforce ecosystem alone will create 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs in India. We also have an SMB market focus with customized solution for the segment that has proven to empower SMBs to get started and tap into the power of Salesforce with apps for sales and service that are easy to use, setup and maintain.
How was your customer acquisition growth? What were the customer engagement programs of the year and what was the outcome?
From start-ups to some of the largest tech companies in the world, there is an amazing sales opportunity for us in India. We’ve significantly grown our new logo acquisition in all market segments. Some of our key customers in India include: Godrej, KFC, DTDC, Jana Small Finance Bank, United Breweries, and Snapdeal among many more. India is pivotal in driving Customer Success, providing our customers with 24/7 support around the world. India also has the largest developer ecosystem outside of the US, which has resulted in a unique ISV ecosystem that addresses unique use cases, customer pain points and solutions. Salesforce investments in ISV’s across India have accelerated over the last 3 – 4 years and we believe this is a crucial platform to drive innovation in the region and even around the world.
Which verticals embraced your solutions maximum and why?
We saw great traction across all segments but BFSI was definitely quicker to take to CRM this year. One of the unique challenges of business banking in a digital world is meeting customer expectations. You can’t just have a great checking account or lending terms, as you can with most retail customers. You must offer sound financial advice. And in the information age, that means having in-depth knowledge of each customer’s industry, taking a tailored approach, and doing it all faster than ever before.
Can you point out some of CIO Challenges in 2018 from the CRM point of view? What was the experience of Salesforce in mitigating those challenges?
When a business is growing at breakneck speed, IT’s challenge is to efficiently support expanding day-to-day operations and a growing workforce while enabling continual innovation. CIOs must ensure both near-term and multiyear strategies are in place to deliver the underlying technology needed for foundational systems as well as the differentiating systems that create a competitive advantage. This requires building strong, collaborative relationships among the technology team, internal and external business partners, customers, and industry experts. Most importantly, it means spending time with our customers so we can better understand how to serve them, whether through our website, mobile apps, help and training, or ordering and billing tools.
CIOs don’t have the unlimited budgets required to start completely from scratch with the latest technologies across the board. The ability to integrate is the key. Leveraging cloud apps streamlines the complex process of integrating systems, platforms, data stores, and other existing assets into overall IT architectures. For organizations to succeed, CIOs must ensure the right talent is in the right position, and then provide employees opportunities to grow.
