Salesforce.com Inc. is reaping the benefits of a stronger focus on B2B e-commerce technology and services, executives and stock analysts said this week.
Revenue from Salesforce’s B2B software helped to drive up revenue by more than a third in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud software products for the second quarter ended June 30, pushing total revenue in the quarter past $3 billion.
Mark Murphy, a stock analyst with JP Morgan Chase & Co., said on an earnings conference call with Salesforce executives Wednesday that Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud—and in particular its CloudCraze B2B e-commerce software and SteelBrick configure-price-quote software—appeared to be emerging as a “fourth pillar” among Salesforce’s big focus areas of sales, service and marketing software applications.
Murphy noted that technology deployment partners of Salesforce are beginning to see their own consulting contract values “increasing 20% or 30% when a customer adopts commerce and CPQ” along with other Salesforce applications like its Sales Cloud software, according to a transcript of the conference call from Seeking Alpha. He didn’t name any of those technology partners.
Salesforce launched its B2B e-commerce software in June following its acquisition earlier this year of CloudCraze for an undisclosed sum. CloudCraze built its B2B e-commerce software on the Salesforce.com technology platform, providing it with strong integration with the CRM and other cloud applications Salesforce provides.
The acquisition of CloudCraze was preceded by Salesforce’s acquisition of CPQ software firm SteelBrick in 2015 for about $360 million and retail e-c0mmerce software vendor Demandware in 2016. The combination of CloudCraze, Demandware and SteelBrick has provided Salesforce a more complete collection of B2B and B2C commerce and software as it competes with business software providers like SAP SE, industry analysts say.
“This means, now with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, our customers can provide the same experiences for their B2B business buyers that they do for their B2C consumers, all from a single platform,” Salesforce chairman and Co-CEO Marc Benioff said on the conference call. Salesforce initially developed its Commerce Cloud software after paying $2.8 billion to acquire Demandware.
For the second quarter ended June 30, Salesforce reported:
- Combined Marketing and Commerce Cloud revenue increased 37.3% to $452 million from $329 million a year earlier;
- Sales Cloud revenue increased 12.6% to $1.004 billion from $891 million;
- Total revenue increased 28.4% to $3.060 billion from $2.383 billion;
- Gross profit increased 27.2% to $2.43 billion from $1.91 billion;
- Net income amounted to $299 million, up from $46 million.
For the six months ended June 30, Salesforce reported:
- Combined Marketing and Commerce Cloud revenue increased 39.2% to $874 million from $628 million a year earlier;
- Sales Cloud revenue increased 14.5% to $1.97 billion from $1.72 billion;
- Total revenue increased 26.6% to $6.29 billion from $4.97 billion;
- Gross profit increased 28% to $4.67 billion from $3.65 billion;
- Net income amounted to $643 million, up from $47 million.
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