In February, Salesforce, the world’s number 1 customer relationship management organization, acquired Vlocity for $1.33 billion. The deal was meant to open up new industry capabilities built on the Salesforce platform. Now, the company has made an announcement that the agreement has been closed, and David Schmeier, CEO of Vlocity, has been appointed as CEO of a new division called Salesforce Industries.
Vlocity has built several robust CRM tools across a wide range of industries, including media and entertainment, healthcare and government that resides on the Salesforce Platform. While Salesforce has developed some of its industry-specific solutions, having a division dedicated to verticalized tools discover new and innovative market opportunities for the company.
David Schmaier sees the new Salesforce industries division as an effective commitment from the company on the value of an industry-based approach.
Schmaier commented, “As Vlocity becomes part of what we’re calling Salesforce Industries, this will be a larger group within Salesforce to focus on bringing these industry-specific solutions to the customer, helping them go digital and working in a whole new way.”
Brett Taylor, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Salesforce, will become Schmeier’s boss. In a blog post announcing the new department, Taylor said that with so many aspects of strategic solutions in today’s technology industry, the primary focus is on helping companies with digital transformation. Taylor added as the whole world is undergoing the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, most of the companies are being forced to operate online, and Salesforce wants to provide more specific and effective solutions for customers who need it.
In a company blog post, Taylor said, “Companies in every industry have a digital transformation imperative like never before — and many are accelerating their plans for a digital-first, work-from-anywhere environment. With Salesforce Customer 360 and Vlocity, our customers have the most advanced industries platform as well as tools and expert guidance completely tailored to their specific needs.”
Schmaier said the fact that his company’s tooling has been built on top of the Salesforce platform allows them to get a head start without the integration challenges that are usually faced by both the company after such an acquisition.
Schmaier further said.“We have a platform now inside Salesforce to build verticals. So the cost to build new verticals is a fraction of what it was for us to build the first one because of this industry cloud platform. So we are going to look at opportunities to build new ones, but we’re not ready to announce that today. For starters, we are forming this one organization,”
