CRM and Business Intelligence are logical bedfellows and now, particularly with COVID-19 shifted workforces, adding remote collaboration to the party makes a lot of sense. This could be due to the interoperability benefits of having multiple products from the same vendor and/or the additional negotiating power it affords a customer – buying 3 products from 1 vendor may well give you a better overall price than if each came from a different vendor.īack in June 2019, Salesforce spent over $15 billion to acquire Tableau Software – a move I believe was, at least in part, an effort to compete with Microsoft’s ability to offer Dynamics 365 + Power BI. However, one of Microsoft’s strengths is their broad portfolio, often meaning that even if their product doesn’t stack up feature to feature against a competitor’s – the fact you can also buy other products from Microsoft wins them the deal. As Redmond put more and more focus on Dynamics 365, it becomes a bigger threat to Salesforce’s CRM customer base. This, to me, is further evidence of Salesforce’s aspiration/need to compete with Microsoft – this time focused on Microsoft Teams. This move likely has (at least) two motives behind it – staving off competition and gaining additional revenue from existing customers. Reports emerged last week that CRM giant Salesforce was in talks to buy techie-friendly chat and collaboration service, Slack – and the deal was announced Decemfor $27.7 billion.

Salesforce acquisition of slack