Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is pushing for more social integration in its suite of products as is evident from the some of its recent acquisitions like Radian6, a social media marketing campaign management tool, and Rypple, a social software for employee feedback and recognition. Salesforce also has Chatter which is a free customized social network, bundled with all of its applications. This focus on social seems to be paying off, with Chatter moving from an added on feature to what is now becoming an order winner for Salesforce. [1] The company currently competes with SAP (NYSE:SAP), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in the ERP segment.
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Chatter Gaining Traction
Currently, there are about 150,000 Chatter networks. Though Chatter itself is usually offered as a free add-on, it is definitely driving sales for the rest of Salesforces’ offerings. Recent wins include contracts for value added services from its existing clients Burberry Group Plc and Kimberly-Clark (NYSE:KMB). These contracts are in the range of $10 million and $100 million respectively. Chatter and other cloud based software currently make up 37.4 percent of our $126 Trefis Price Estimate. [2]
The company admittedly takes inspiration from Facebook and is trying to get companies to adopt a model they call ‘the Social Enterprise’ where decision support tools have a social aspect to it enabled by Chatter.
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Notes:- Salesforce.com’s Social Enterprise Emphasizes ‘Customer’ in CRM, InformationWeek Software [↩]
- Chatter may boost Salesforce.com products: Barron’s, Chicago Tribune [↩]
