Salesforce - Not a one-pony trick

Pratima H

MUMBAI, INDIA: If just a decade back someone had uttered that something called Cloud would make the years-old Enterprise software model wobble, the statement would have evoked a few guffaws at the best. People would have clinked glasses, laughed over the presumptuous joke and carried on with the party.

Years later, that very joke is scraping the AMC lining of ERP pockets, has mercilessly shaken the core of the industry’s revenue model, and continues to make the same foreheads sweat and the same glasses spill that shrugged it as funny fiction back then.

An IDC report sees cloud spending in India itself increasing at a radical average compounded rate of 26 per cent from 2015 to 2020, with spending on IT growing at a clip of an average compound growth rate of eight per cent.

SaaS is not a new hat in the ring anymore. It is the new rope that has redefined the ring’s precincts. But where and how much can it evolve to, if that’s what it chooses to do instead of immersing itself in the new-found glory? There’s so much water beneath this fresh well-spring but is there oil or a diamond pile further if one keeps drilling?

Let's see what's happening here and ask Dan Bognar, Senior Vice President – Solutions Engineering from Salesforce if these platform evolutions, AI in ERP, upgrade approach, micro-vertical wave are deeper layers easy and worth pursuing.

Tell us something about your experience and strategy with the Indian market first. Is it mirroring the adoption the west front has seen?

We see India as a significant opportunity. The conversations here are revolving around digital transformation, and India’s advancements in mobility are quite a parallel force. Cloud computing accounted for $8 billion of business revenue for 2015 in India. We also anticipate 20 per cent of Indian software spending to be on cloud computing by 2020, from what IDC tells in a specific study.

We are encouraged with the leaps this region is taking and love the new numbers that Saleforce economy is generating. Close to 5,00,000 jobs are projected to be added to the Indian economy directly and indirectly from use of Salesforce by 2020, with $4.2 billion to be added in GDP impact to the economy via Salesforce customer.  It is a substantial market for us.

Does it bother you when others are approaching the same space you aim for with a mid-market strategy or IoT strategy?

We are ahead in terms of innovation. In Iot, we see value in two aspects: connection to the device itself and customer’s action based on automation. We are and will remain proactive. We are proto-typing a lot.

How about what Infor, Epicor etc have done with micro-verticals?

We always value competition. At Salesforce, it always comes back to the customer. We pivot towards them and allow them a lot of capabilities as well as choice through our global partners. The industry is going through a big transition. We have announced two new micro-verticals in wealth management and healthcare space. With our partner ecosystem, we continue expanding functionalities and extensions. Also, our customers can build their own applications on the platform.

Platform vis a vis the core – how well is this model working out? Is it easy in terms of upgrades and roadmaps because that's usually been a pet peeve of customers using big ERP products?

This is the age of the customer and we are trying to equip the customer with everything that we can. Our platform is a complete platform and there’s a lot of room for customer to innovate on it. We deliver at least three upgrades to our platform every year. To enable customers to get easy access to functionalities, we have to make sure that any configuration that a customer has, gets preserved well. We accomplish this smoothness and consistency through meta-data and unique architectures. We don’t force the change on the customer. It is up to him to turn the change on or not. But all the source code is available to the customer.

We focus on what the customer wants so it is never about retro-fitting or messing with what’s been invested in. What the customer wants – is the main driver. Survival today is one’s ability to delight the customer- nothing less than would work.

Your direction with Einstein etc hints of another change on its way. How significant and visible would AI be in this space?

We are trying to sort the challenge of intelligence and are working at the heart of apps. If AI can predict an opportunity for a salesperson, or to discover data or anticipate behavior that helps at a crucial moment – that’s going to be wonderful. We are making AI capabilities pervasive in the cloud. We want to democratize our innovation. We are building AI as a feature on our platform and embedded in each of our apps, so the customer has to simply turn it on.