While just about every business software company is having a sweet spot, it's not uncommon for one to see revenue grow by as much as a quarter from year to year. This is the case of Salesforce, which has closed its fiscal year 2022 with a turnover of 26,490 million dollars, 24.6% more than in 2021, which in turn was another 24% better than 2020, and this, a 29% over the pre-pandemic. In the current year, it plans to rise to 32,000 million, and so on until reaching 50,000 million in 2026.
Despite such dazzling ambitions, Salesforce's share price has suffered a decline in recent weeks similar to that of the entire technology industry. This does not dent the optimism of Bret Taylor, previously director of operations and who since November has shared the position of CEO with the totemic founder of the company, Marc Benioff. “The reason why we are growing at this rate year after year is the same reason why we have emerged unscathed from the pandemic and other crises that the sector has gone through: we help our clients to face the problems of the moment and to do it in such a way so that they can anticipate unexpected events.
Taylor highlights the agility that the platform brings to companies is its recipe for continued growth. “If it hadn't been for the existing digitalization –he stated–, companies and sectors, as well as blocks of the world economy, would have collapsed in the past two and a half years. In the meantime, certain positive trends have accelerated, and one of them is the pursuit of agility.”
“In the past – he continued – IT managers were used to treating the experience of customers and their employees separately and, therefore, considering separate investments; in the future they will have to integrate them”. This is Salesforce's aspiration, bolstered by several acquisitions in recent years.
What is the ideal strategy for the post-pandemic? “We have to be the support of our clients, and these, of their clients, so that they adapt to the pace and complexity of today's world. Organizations have already begun to build digital infrastructures that can act as ever-evolving platforms for the long term, rather than continuing to act on the basis of isolated IT projects, as they have done until now.” This demand for deep digitization would be, according to Taylor, the main lesson left by the two and a half years of the pandemic.
When returning to normal, the biggest challenge for companies is ensuring the proper functioning of hybrid work. “We all participate in the same competition for talent; we all know that expectations of flexibility on the part of employees are going to be maintained. This is one of the reasons why technology will be a determining factor in the nature of companies.”
In the case of Salesforce, the conversion is planned as follows: of its 75,000 employees in 2022, just over 30,000 have joined during the pandemic; most had not set foot in their offices and many had not even had personal contact with their bosses. “These figures come to demonstrate the new meaning of digitization: you have to be prepared for a situation like the one we have just experienced, or another similar one, to repeat itself at any time and still continue capturing the value that a workforce is capable of generating. The new role of the offices will be that of collaborative spaces, in which each individual will be able to unfold their creativity”, he concluded.
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