ISG Provider Lens™ Salesforce Ecosystem Partners - U.S. 2020 - Managed Application Services
The Salesforce Ecosystem and Its Structure
Since the company was founded in 1999, Salesforce has shown significant growth and is currently the world’s leading provider of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) functionality as a service (SaaS). From the outset, the company has been focused on agile implementation and a high level of standardization, which, in turn, compels it to issue frequent application updates. Furthermore, this helps clients complete rapid implementations that can start with limited functional scope and be enhanced over time. Meanwhile, the continuous updates on the software has led to a variety of products being offered. Starting with Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, that are undoubtedly the most mature products, the Salesforce portfolio encompasses numerous other products. Some of these products, such as Community Cloud or the Commerce Cloud, are focused on specific functionalities, while others, such as Financial Services Cloud or the Health Cloud, are focused on particular industries.
For the implementation and operation of Salesforce-based applications, most companies have to solicit the capabilities of service providers because they often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge or capacity. While selecting an appropriate provider, it’s important to consider that the complexity of the underlying application system landscape tends to increase with the size of the company. An additional dimension to this complexity appears when real global system design and rollout are required. Hence, in most cases, large enterprise customers prefer providers that have strong integration capabilities and are working on a global scale, using, for example, major system integrators. Frequently this goes alongside the need to consolidate multiple isolated Salesforce instances that have already been growing over a period of time, primarily driven by the businesses themselves without the involvement of respective IT divisions. And finally, providers in this field need
to offer appropriate capabilities in other common software packages. All of this leads, in contrast to the pure agile approaches that were applied in most early Salesforce projects, to an implementation methodology that is a combination of agile elements for the implementation phases with phase-oriented elements in terms of strategy, design and rollout. The common term for this approach is hybrid agile.
The pure agile approaches are suitable for small and midsize companies with limited global presence or for those cases where an implementation is required within a global company’s subsidiaries that have limited scope. For this segment, integration and consolidation is not as important as for the large companies with a global presence and that require major system integrators. In this case, midsize service providers that focus on Salesforce only and on agile implementations have an important share of the market. These providers are often referred to as boutique providers.
Within this report, the two main categories of providers explained above are to a large extent associated with different quadrants.
Another important trend in the Salesforce ecosystem, in the recent years, is ongoing consolidation. This is primarily reflected in the various acquisitions that took place with large system integrators in the U.S. market acquiring boutique providers. One important reason for this trend is the need among system integrators for fast growth of their own workforce to meet the increasing demand for a myriad of services. In addition, the system integrators enrich their methodologies by bringing in the agile mindset that is characteristic of most boutique providers. However, it is a challenge to merge the two different cultures within one organization, which is indicated by the fact that, in many cases, the acquired companies continue to operate under their own labels and are not integrated into the acquirer’s company.
For all providers, irrespective of them being system integrators or boutique providers, a strong network of partnerships with independent software vendors (ISVs) within the Salesforce ecosystem is highly important. The primary reason for this is that industryspecific requirements or extended requirements for particular functions, such as configure-price-quote (CPQ), quite often, go beyond the standardized scope of Salesforce products alone. Hence, if services providers want to cover these bases by implementing reusable solutions, instead of individual products, they need to utilize the offerings of the ISVs. These solutions are usually offered as independent products with separate licensing models that need to be considered when assessing the potential costs of a Salesforcebased application. Salesforce runs a specific web-based store for these solutions, called AppExchange Store, that provides comprehensive information about ISVs and their products (usually called apps). Salesforce ensures that the apps meet basic software quality measures, maintenance cycles and compatibility with Salesforce products, among other requirements.