Here’s the #TechNews you need to know today! Catch up with news on this week’s blog and find out about the interview CNN did to Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff’s, and his comments on Women equality and why he disagrees with Shark Tank billionaire Mark Cuban.
1) Salesforce is investing in APX Labs
Salesforce continues to demonstrate its support towards the new tendency of wearable devices for enterprises. Now, it is investing in APX labs, a startup company that develops software for these devices. APX is known in particular for their work with heavy industries like energy, automotive, and aerospace.
According to a Washington Business Journal report, “APX Labs has raised another $10 million in venture capital, a round that includes new investors Salesforce Ventures and SineWave Ventures”. However, it is still not clear how much each company has invested.
APX Labs’ software integrates various devices, helps improve workflow, contract approval and sending emails, making it easy for users to perform simple tasks straight from the wearable device. The software makes wearable devices even more useful.
Salesforce has been one of the earliest adopters of wearable devices among enterprise software companies; and its CEO Marc Benioff has always encouraged this tendency. With this recent investment in wearable tech for enterprises it is clear that Salesforce is trying to attain a first mover advantage in a market that it expects to grow significantly over the next few years.
2) Salesforce is pushing for gender equality
Over the past few months a lot of attention has been paid to whether women are succeeding in Silicon Valley and Salesforce CEO talks about it in a recent interview with CNN’s correspondent Poppy Harlow, and he explains how he plans to change things around in Salesforce regarding this issue.
Salesforce is now the largest employer in San Francisco with over 15,000 employees where 71% are men, and 85% of leadership positions are occupied by men, at what he acknowledges to have found “a little bit” of disparity at the company and vows to try to employ 50% women five years from now.
Salesforce is pushing for gender equality: as a first step, Benioff is making sure women are paid equally as men at Salesforce saying, “I would really like to achieve that within 12 months…we’re committed to women having the same executive roles and all possibilities for them as well.” In fact, Benioff considers gender equality ought to be one of the metrics for every company just as a CEO has a market share goal, or some other type of revenue goal.
If you want to watch the full interview go to this link http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2015/06/11/marc-benioff-salesforce-women.cnnmoney/index.html
3) Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff disagrees with Mark Cuban
Salesforce CEO Benioff disagrees with Mark Cuban and his allegations about stepping into another dot-com bubble that’s about to burst. Cuban has been warning everyone about the tech bubble for a while now, even writing a blog post titled “Why this tech bubble is worse than the tech bubble of 2000.”
Recently during a CNN interview, when asked about Cuban’s declarations Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, said, “I don’t think there’s a bubble. I think there’s a huge amount of innovation in Silicon Valley that’s getting monetized.”
Benioff says that most of this startup companies are generating real revenue and have a strong business model in contrast with companies from that of the 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst. The biggest problem then was that they failed to generate any meaningful revenue, spending more money on shipping than what was earned from selling actual products, relying on vague web-traffic metrics. Benioff compared companies like Uber, Dropbox, and Airbnb saying that these are solid businesses generating real money. “These are real companies with very significant revenue streams.”
Benioff does not only talks about how we are not in another dot-com bubble, and how this startups are profitable but he acts on it. Salesforce has invested and partnered with a lot of this companies such as DocSend, DocuSign, HotelTonight and many others. They even have a website “Salesforce for startups” where they provide access to technology, tools and expertise to help entrepreneurs build better companies.
https://startups.salesforce.com/?utm_source=vc&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=thx
4) Salesforce Teaming up With Acxiom’s Liveramp, Neustar And Viant
Salesforce latest marketing software update uses CRM to personalize cross-channel engagemet.
What is really impressive about this update is the ad-targeting or ad-buying capability, which will enable marketers to grab their CRM data from Salesforce and tide it to analytics to later inform ad buys.
This component enables marketers to buy and optimize ads targeting real-time audiences, analyzing customers’ online purchases, behavior, opened or clicked on emails, and other information to reach out to them based on real customer data. “We can use the CRM data to take the campaign down to an audience of one,” said Eric Stahl, senior vice president of product marketing for the Salesforce marketing business division. Salesforce is also teaming up with data analytics, measurement and ad-tech companies, including Acxiom’s Liveramp, Neustar and Viant in order to improve their offerings.
Today, advertising is reliant on tracking consumers and the devices they use, that’s how marketers learn about customers’ wants and needs. This new component unifies the ad-marketing world with the tech world in a bigger level and enables companies to understand even more their user base and to deliver in a timely matter.
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