Deals

It's vital to stay ahead of the activists and to act before they force your hand, even if the results will be very similar. Staying ahead means possibly keeping some activists off your board of directors.

INSIGHTS

Salesforce’s Suitors

Activist investors frequently, but not always, strip a company of its equity, load it with debt, and cast it off, a quivering hulk of a once dynamic company. It's too early to say this fate awaits Salesforce, and it's important to see the process work out because there is some truth in the need for ...

INSIGHTS

Twitter, Musk: And the Winner Is … CRM

Regardless of how the Twitter acquisition turns out, it looks like the big winner will be CRM, both the industry and the ticker symbol.

INSIGHTS

Oracle’s ‘Box of Chocolates’

Oracle's acquisition of health IT company Cerner could turn out to be pure genius. But right now, I see a Gumpian box of chocolates, and what I notice acutely are the missing jobs and resources in CX.

B2B software marketers need visibility into how customers and prospects interact with their products so they can improve product experiences. This integration enhances the streamlining of operations, improves marketing opportunities, and reduces the risk of customer churn.

Intuit on Monday announced an agreement to acquire Mailchimp, a global customer engagement and marketing platform for small and mid-market businesses, for $12 billion in cash and stock advances. The purchase could be the linchpin that thrusts the mostly financial software company into solving more f...

ANALYSIS

Making Sales Safe for Process

A sales process is a set of protocols that an organization uses to conduct selling. One's process needs not be complex, many organizations settle on processes that have around seven steps. But a sales process that everyone in the organization adheres to is fundamental to that organization's success....

With the recent completion of the Slack acquisition, Salesforce can look forward to improving the quality of the customer-facing business processes that it supports with more and better collaboration. However, the presence of Slack may now highlight the reality that while vendors operate at the spee...

Microsoft has announced it is purchasing Nuance Communications, a natural language to computer processing company, in a deal valued at $19.7 billion. "Nuance's popular healthcare-focused products and services will provide Microsoft an instant revenue stream and relationships with existing Nuance cus...

CRM giant Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to purchase enterprise communications platform Slack. "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, said Marc Benioff, Chair and C...

INSIGHTS

Salesforce Riffs on New Work Styles

Back in Q1 Salesforce threw out its annual plan and did a pretty good imitation of a startup or a jazz band. They developed products like Work.com and Salesforce Anywhere as solutions to the evolving need for systems that would help their customers cope with the pandemic. The products supported both...

INSIGHTS

What’s Going On With Oracle?

Oracle appears to be undergoing a kind of resurgence during the coronavirus crisis. Financial analysts are saying nice things. Its technology, which always has been good, is seeing an interesting uptick. All of this is buffing the company's image after years of, yes-but responses from the market -- ...

INSIGHTS

Zoom Oracles Its Way to Center Stage

Oracle and Zoom just entered a deal that for once is more about technological audacity than about dollars -- a partnership to host Zoom on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. As important as this deal is for Zoom, by helping it to scale massively, the announcement also provides a concrete example of Oracle...

Salesforce just announced it would buy Vlocity -- a startup with all the markings of a unicorn including a billion-dollar valuation -- for $1.33 billion. Vlocity was cofounded and led by David Schmaier, who was executive vice president at Siebel Systems in its go-go years. When Oracle bought Siebel ...

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