Salesforce reports 33% YoY growth in third-quarter results

Global CRM provider Salesforce announced its third-quarter fiscal results this week, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) reported another record-breaking quarter. The company’s total third-quarter revenue reached $4.5 billion, representing an increase of 33% year-over-year.

Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff pointed to Customer 360 Truth, expanded strategic partnerships with their competitors and the company’s streak of acquisitions as drivers of growth. Benioff also cited the company’s commitment to helping its customers undergo digital transformations.

“On the heels of Dreamforce, Salesforce’s plan to continue expanding its strong product portfolio and increasing cloud adoption within its customer base creates an attractive rationale for growth, said Dustin Grosse, chief marketing and strategy officer at Nintex. “But, with competition from cloud companies like Microsoft and Amazon reporting higher than expected earnings, Salesforce must close out this year with compelling results to meet investors’ rising expectations.”

Why we should care

Organizations typically rely on dozens — if not hundreds — of martech applications and vendors to execute their sales, marketing, and other operational functions.

“We’re working with them [customers] on all three pillars of digital transformation, technology business model and culture,” added Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block during an investor relations call. “These three pillars are absolutely essential to achieving a 360-degree view of each customer, and that is the holy grail of digital transformation.”

By maintaining an open ecosystem and honoring its commitment to collaborate with partners including IBM, Amazon and Microsoft, Salesforce is able to deliver a more connected customer view to its users than platforms that strictly limit their integrations.

“We know this data is not just in Salesforce, we know our customers have many platforms. That’s why we’re open and why we work with all of our strategic partners; IBM, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, HP, Dell, and many others,” said Benioff. “Because it’s critical for us to work with these strategic partners to deliver a working, incredible solution for our customers. That’s what our customers want. These partnerships continue to deliver incredible innovation and success.”

More on the news

• Benioff also included statements regarding Salesforce’s Cyber Week performance noting that Commerce Cloud processed more than 30 million orders and powered over 614 million retail site visits. Digital sales on Commerce Cloud increased by 13% during this year’s Cyber Week
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud reportedly deployed over 24 billion emails on Cyber Monday, while Service Cloud processed over 428 million agent interactions.
• “We’re now on track to double our revenue in five years,” said Benioff. “WIth Customer 360, only Salesforce is providing companies with a single source of truth, bringing them even closer to their customers across every touchpoint.”