Salesforce.com chief emerges from quiet zone
Published: 23 Jul 2004 11:00 BST
After The New York Times interview that got you into trouble with the SEC, can we expect a more subdued, restrained Marc Benioff from now on?
I plan to take you out to lunch often, Alorie.
You raised $110m (£60m) from the IPO. How is Salesforce going to spend all that cash?
Well, we talked about that in the S-1 (SEC form), which is how we're going to use the proceeds. We haven't really changed anything since we wrote that document.
Where do you go now? Where are you taking Salesforce?
The most important thing is that we continue to deliver on our proposition of success that's democratised. That is, we have small customers like Zagat, which has 20 subscribers. We have midsized customers such as Polycom, which has 250 subscribers, and we have large customers like ADP, which has 3,000 subscribers.
That's what's exciting to us -- that we're able to deliver on that democracy and level of commoditisation associated with our service. This is a worldwide phenomenon. It's the most successful new technology paradigm introduced in the software industry since we started the company in 1999.
Yes, but the software industry is so fickle. You're only as good as your next big idea. What's that going to be for Salesforce?
There are two things we're focused on. Today we announced two new products. We announced our Summer '04 release and our new Enterprise Edition 2.0. In our product today, we do sales force automation, customer service and support, call centres, contact centres, campaign management, contract management, document management and analytics. You probably remember that in our spring release, we announced also custom application development within Salesforce.com. We're continuing to emphasise that and amplify it. These are our two strategic directions.
In terms of capabilities, we're very focused on customisation. We're very focused on integration. We're very focused on making the technology more global and more state-of-the-art. And with Enterprise 2.0, we're going after larger and larger enterprises.
At one point, you talked about expanding beyond the customer relationship management (CRM) arena into accounting and supply chain systems. Is that still a possibility?
We're talking to customers constantly. But when you look at customers like Cisco, they already have a general ledger, they already have payables. CRM is a green field, because more than 50 percent of all CRM implementations have failed. And this is the area we're focused in, and this is the right place. We're closing more deals, more large deals and more subscribers than perhaps all on-demand companies combined, as far as we can tell.
Do you worry that being public makes Salesforce.com a takeover target? We just heard (Oracle chief executive) Larry Ellison talk about his shopping list. Those on it are San Francisco Bay Area companies led by former Oracle executives. Salesforce might fit the bill.
We made Larry Ellison a lot of money on the IPO, but I haven't really got my thank-you call yet from him.
Do you have a shopping list of your own?
We don't have any comment on acquisitions.
Do you have a five-year plan for the company?
Our five-year plan is to make as many customers successful as possible. I think this is the key, that we continue to listen to them and drive our products toward what they need.
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