"Ohana" is a Hawaiian word that means family and support system. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has repeatedly used the term to define the CRM vendor’s culture.
Yet, the bleak layoff stories swirling the Silicon Valley stalwart have hit that reputation hard.
After mass exits in January, Salesforce has cut 258 more jobs. According to SFGATE – a San Francisco news website – these will impact staff in "sales and customer service," "technology and product," and "general administration."
The news comes as activist investors make their presence felt, perhaps forcing Salesforce’s hand.
Much of their focus seems to be in shifting Slack from the forefront of Salesforce’s messaging. Indeed, the UC platform is picking up most of the – well – slack.
For instance, prior to this latest round of layoffs, The Register reported: "There’s no more Slack left to cut."
The news is unfortunate, particularly as Slack is well placed within Salesforce’s portfolio. It overlays its CRM solutions and Contact Center Genie, with Einstien AI running between the stack. That is a potentially powerful enterprise communications proposition.
Yet, its formation appears to have come too late. After all, many businesses already switched to Microsoft Teams during the pandemic – largely due to the familiarity everyone has with Office - leaving little room in the UC space for Slack to exploit.
Indeed, Teams has cemented itself as the UC market leader, with 280MN users. Such a sizeable lead in a mature market is likely difficult to claw back, and the $28BN price tag on slack now seems overegged, to put it delicately.
The good news for Salesforce is that it remains the most dominant player in the CRM market – with IDC noting that it outsells Microsoft – its closest rival – by four to one in the space.
Cementing this status seems to be the focus for now, after a glut of acquisitions in recent years, including Slack, MuleSoft, and Tableau – loosening the purse strings significantly.
