Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Salesforce drawn from our latest market research, Ventana Research Buyers Guide: Revenue Performance Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.  

In all of our Buyers Guides we utilize a structured research methodology called the Value Index that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for revenue performance management. We evaluated Salesforce and six other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI 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. 

Our analysis classified Salesforce as a vendor of Merit, placing sixth overall with an 81.1%. Salesforce’s best performance came in Product Experience at 82.9%, ranking fifth, due in part to its second-place ranking in Adaptability. In Customer Experience, Salesforce placed sixth at 74.4% due to its 73.3% performance in Validation. Salesforce was designated a Leader in Adaptability and Manageability.  

Salesforce’s Product Experience was impacted by its performance in Capability, where it should continue to extend its functionality into incentive compensation and quota planning to round out its RPM functionality. Customer Experience was impacted by its performance in Validation where it could reiterate the investments it’s making in enhancing customer experience and continue to develop strong and quantified customer use cases.  

Salesforce performed best in Product Experience, notably in Adaptability, due to its vast integration and API capabilities. In addition, Salesforce’s strong security and privacy characteristics led to its positive performance in Manageability. Salesforce exceeds its support for administration by non-IT users which is also reflected in its Manageability ranking.  

This assessment was based on Salesforce Sales Cloud, v. Spring ’23 and was available in April of 2023. 

Salesforce, like all revenue performance management vendors, should continue to move away from the traditional focus on new sales in a way that ensures the product fully supports the ability to plan and optimize across all potential sales and revenue channels. By making this central to their application, it provides not just a set of "what to do" tools, but also guidance on "how to" as buyers look to plan for all channels and types of revenue.  

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 Buyers Guide by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.