Salesforce.com Inc. reported strong sales growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2017 led by agreements with seven financial services institutions including Citigroup Inc. and PNC Bank, Keith Block, president and chief operating officer, said Thursday on its quarterly earnings call.

class=”Default”>“Not only did we close a record number of seven-figure-plus transactions in Q3, but the value of those transactions grew significantly,” Block said.

Salesforce, a leading vendor of cloud-based customer relationship management, or CRM, and other technologies to businesses, also signed an unnamed “global consumer packaged goods” company that wanted to expand from online B2B sales to consumer sales, Block said. That agreement included CRM technology and services, for managing sales personnel and customer data, and e-commerce technology from the company’s Commerce Cloud unit, formed by the July acquisition of Demandware.

Salesforce completed its $2.8 billion acquisition of Demandware in the second quarter. Demandware, also a cloud-based e-commerce technology vendor, contributed $57.9 million in revenue from the acquisition date of July 11 through Oct. 31, Salesforce reported.

Commerce Cloud competes with other software delivered through the cloud—that is, with the vendor hosting the software and data and clients accessing it via the web. While both Salesforce and Demandware have always delivered their technology through the cloud, they will take on major technology providers that initially provided on-premise e-commerce software but in recent years have offered cloud-based offerings as this model gained traction. Those include IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and the Hybris division of SAP SE. The new Salesforce Commerce Cloud will also compete with NetSuite Inc., which like Demandware has from the start delivered its software via the cloud, also known as the software-as-a-service model.

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Salesforce is listed as a provider of customer relationship management, or CRM, technology by 18 companies in the 2017 B2B E-Commerce 300.Oracle closed its $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite on Nov. 7.

For the third quarter of fiscal 2017 ended Oct. 31, Salesforce reported:

  • Total sales of $2.14 billion, up 25.1% from $1.71 billion.
  • Subscription and support revenue of $1.983 billion, up 24.2% from $1.596 billion.
  • Professional services revenue of $160.8 million, up 39.1% from $115.6 million.
  • Operating expenses of $1.56 billion, up 25.8% from $1.24 billion.
  • Net loss of $37.3 million, compared with a net loss of $25.2 million in the same quarter last year.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2017 Salesforce reported:

  • Total sales of $6.10 billion, up by 25.5% from $4.86 billion in the same period last year.
  • Subscription and support revenue of $5.65 billion, up 25.0% from $4.52 billion.
  • Professional services revenue of $452.4 million, up 35.1% from $334.9 million.
  • Operating expenses of $4.40 billion, up 23.9% from $3.55 billion.
  • Net income of $231.1 million compared with a net loss of $21.9 million through the first nine months of fiscal 2016.

“I’m delighted to announce that we expect to deliver our first $10 billion year during our fiscal year 2018, which puts us well on the path to reach $20 billion faster than any other enterprise software company,” said Marc Benioff, Salesforce chairman and CEO.

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