Salesforce.com Acquires Assistly to Bolster CRM Offering

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is the market leader in cloud based CRM (customer relationship management) where it competes with giants like SAP (NYSE:SAP), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and IBM (NYSE:IBM). We expect its 15% share in the overall CRM market comprised of on premise and on-demand (cloud) offerings to increase going forward as the industry shifts to the cloud paradigm in the coming years.

Salesforce.com has been rapidly innovating and adding new features to its CRM offering, either organically or through acquisitions. It announced that it acquired Assistly, a social customer service startup, for $50 million. Salesforce.com can not only make its own CRM offering more compelling with Assistly’s technology, but it also gains its client base which is comprised of companies like Instagram, Klout, Spotify and Square.

We currently have a $124 Trefis price estimate for Salesforce.com, which stands 5% above the current market price.

Assistly to Assist Salesforce.com’s CRM Offering

Assistly lets small companies and emerging businesses set up and deliver social customer-service in minutes, with zero-touch onboarding. With Assistly, companies can manage service cases and engage with customers in real time over a range of channels – including Facebook, Twitter, Web chats, e-mail and phone – all from one, easy-to-use interface. ^[1]

Assistly allows clients to pay only for their total usage, instead of a fixed fee, which makes it ideal for small businesses. Salesforce.com’s current CRM offering is aimed at large and medium sized businesses, so the acquisition will help it crack the small business market which is booming.

Check out our complete price analysis for Salesforce.com

1. Salesforce.com Acquires Assistly, Press Release [↩]