Market Perspectives

We are happy to share insights about Salesforce drawn from our latest research, the Revenue Performance Management Value Index, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In all our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated Salesforce and 11 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Revenue Performance Management.

Salesforce was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking second overall in this Value Index assessment. It ranked second in Product Experience, where it was designated as a Value Index Leader in Adaptability, Capability, Manageability and Reliability. It ranked fifth in Customer Experience, and was a Value Index Leader in Validation. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in Usability and TCO/ROI, which represent 30% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that Salesforce could perform better in Usability by examining the area of intelligence to better direct and alert users to required tasks, activities and recommended actions. In TCO/ROI, the company should improve its communication around the business benefits in its products for revenue performance. Organizations evaluating Salesforce should examine the vendor’s approach to supporting sales and revenue performance.

Salesforce actively participated in the evaluation process and request for information for this Value Index. This assessment was based on Salesforce’s RPM products available in 2021. After the Value Index was published, Salesforce announced the Spring ’22 release, which provides enhancements to Sales Cloud with the addition of Revenue Intelligence, which incorporates Tableau CRM and extends the use of Einstein AI to provide data driven insights into pipeline, opportunities and forecasts.

Prospective customers should look at their organization’s evolution in moving from a sales focus to a revenue focus and better understand whether existing processes and technology are a strong enough foundation for where the organization is today as well as where it is going. The added complexity of adopting multiple selling channels and a broader number of roles directly linked to revenue prompts a reassessment of whether existing processes and technology support the necessary balance of resources, incentives, and performance tracking to align all the teams involved.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of Revenue Performance Management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.