Salesforce Fuels ISV, Consultant Businesses

Written by Lynn Haber
November 7, 2017

Salesforce talks about investments, customer success and collaboration with ISVs and consultant partners at Dreamforce.

SALESFORCE DREAMFORCE — The Salesforce economy, which has a projected value of $859 billion by 2022, is expected to fuel strong growth in the company’s partner ecosystem of ISVs and consultants.

This year, it already has. So much so that at this week’s Dreamforce 2017 event, Salesforce dedicated a keynote to each of the two distinct partner types, outlining where it’s making investments, creating opportunities and laying out some new initiatives.

The AppExchange ISV keynote, “Winning Together in the Salesforce Ecosystem,” focused on new program changes, new technology and the new AppExchange.

Leyla Seka, executive vice president, AppExchange at Salesforce, delved into the new AppExchange Partner Program that the company launched in May. The new partner program replaced the existing ISV Partner Program. A key feature is a $100 million Salesforce Platform Fund, launched by Salesforce Ventures to supercharge new AI solutions.

Some other program features that Seka pointed out are the new Trailblazer Scorecard, a point-based system that supports partners for growth and a variety of activities, such as customer success, product success, team readiness and giving back via the company’s Pledge 1% program.

Salesforce’s Andrew Albert

Andrew Albert, vice president, AppExchange and ISV technical enablement at Salesforce, talked about Lightning, Einstein for ISVs — including Predication Builder and Einstein.ai; and, new technology for ISV developers, such as Platform Events, Big Objects, and Salesforce DX.

Vlocity CEO and founder David Schmaier exemplifies the innovation ISVs bring to Salesforce. Five years ago, there weren’t vertical industry apps for Salesforce; now there are. Vlocity, an industry-specific cloud and mobile software company, delivers Industry Cloud Apps for communications, energy, insurance, health care and government sectors.

“Those are the industries that we all know from personal experience that have the worst customer service, so they really need our help,” Schmaier said.

In its fourth year of operation, the company hit $50 million in revenue and expects to double that next year.

“It would take you $50-$100 million and years to build something like Salesforce. And we got here by using the world’s No. 1 platform and CRM apps,” he said, who noted that it’s free, it scales and it’s trusted.

Vlocity has built an impressive customer base including companies such as T-Mobile, Anthem, Delta Dental, MetLife, and Farmers Insurance, to name a handful. Two years ago, Vlocity invested in Salesforce Analytics, last year Lightning, and most recently, Einstein.

“We definitely think the future is in greater intelligence and AI, and that couldn’t be more important than for verticals,” Schmaier said.

Tyler Prince, Worldwide Alliances and go-to-market executive vice president at Salesforce, opened the Consulting Partner Keynote, “Driving Lasting Customer Success,” pointing out that there’s room for 250,000 more consultants in the Salesforce partner ecosystem; however, partners face …