Scrappy startup RelateIQ became the latest addition to Salesforce’s arsenal of sales and marketing solutions today, after being acquired for $390 million by Benioff and co.
The Palo Alto-based RelateIQ is a CRM oriented platform that tracks and pulls together customer data across a variety of digital sources, including email, social networks and online calendars. It automates the process of data entry when analyzing professional relationships, which is a big pain point for sales teams.
Writing on the company blog, RelateIQ CEO Steve Loughlin said:
We believe this offers our customers the best of both worlds. Salesforce.com pioneered the shift to enterprise cloud computing, redefining modern CRM as we know it. As you know, RelateIQ is pioneering the next generation of intelligent computing through data science and machine learning. Looking ahead, salesforce.com’s acquisition of RelateIQ will extend the value of salesforce.com’s #1 CRM apps and platform with a new level of intelligence across sales, service, and marketing.
By buying RelateIQ, Salesforce will be able to offer a valuable machine-learning feature to its current CRM solutions. But more importantly, it’s been able to eliminate the potential competition before it gets too big. As a few people on Twitter have already mentioned, RelateIQ was the “new CRM” taking on Salesforce’s “old CRM,” and many were thinking about making the switch to it.
Salesforce scoops up RelateIQ. Wow. Less market competition 🙁 http://t.co/qfOQWieV9k h/t @clarecorthell
— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) July 11, 2014
RelateIQ was a biiiiiig threat to Salesforce. *Any* price they paid for it had to be a steal, no? Excited for my friends over there though
— tristan walker (@tristanwalker) July 11, 2014
@jess ….preventing the 2020 headline: @relateiq buys @salesforce
— Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) July 11, 2014
