What is the Future for Salesforce.com? (CRM)

Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is a cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company's majority sales come through its customer relationship management (CRM) tool but it also tries to capitalize on the commercial applications of social networking.

As of September 2015, Salesforce is one of the most highly valued American cloud computing companies in the world, and it has a market cap of $50 billion. With the massive success of the company, it's important to explore the future of Salesforce.

Software as a service (SaaS) products have become increasingly popular and have driven the growth of the CRM market. It's predicted that SaaS CRM solutions will reach a deployment rate of 80 to 85% by 2025.

In the near term, the CRM software market is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14%. The cloud-based CRM subsection of that market is growing at a compound annual rate of 22%.

Ninety-one percent of companies already using Salesforce admit that it helps their marketing teams maintain a strong voice with clients and consumers. What's more, 64% of marketers report that they place a higher value on maintaining existing clients than trying to acquire new ones, adding to the need for Salesforce. These numbers show that cloud-based CRM software will become a ubiquitous tool for client-driven companies around the world.

Salesforce is the top cloud-based CRM on the market. It has a market share of more than 15% and consistently generates upward of $1 billion more in revenue than its closest competitor. Salesforce has positioned itself well to take advantage of the future growth of the industry.

Salesforce has changed the way a business treats and maintains its customer base. Fifty-four percent of the organizations that use Salesforce believe that they can deliver more personalized experiences to their clients and customers. More than 70% of the organizations also reported that Salesforce makes it possible to address customer needs more effectively.

However, even with the success of the company and the growing market, it's not a guarantee that Salesforce will continue to grow. The company knows that it will need to implement new products and features to continue its success.

The company recently reported that it will add data science capabilities to its Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. The Service Cloud lets users automate customer service tasks; the Marketing Cloud lets marketers leverage data for predictive and targeted marketing. A reported 71% of businesses invest in business intelligence and big data, and of those, 20% have reported making substantial investments.

Salesforce has also released new products that will help it maintain its trajectory. The company rolled out its new Lightning CRM in 2015. Through Salesforce Lightning, the company aims to increase sales rep productivity and provide businesses with analytics and intelligence that will drive sales. The company reports that Salesforce Lightning is the future of CRM software and that it creates new levels of efficiency when compared to its core CRM product.

Salesforce Lightning provides a salesperson with customizable dashboards and an activity board that gives a complete picture across all of her deals; the salesperson can drag and drop deals from stage to stage like digital sticky notes. It also adds contextual hovers that allow a salesperson to see what's going on with a customer without needing to navigate multiple pages, and an activity feed can display what just happened in an account and interpret what to do next.

The addition of capabilities such as data science services will help keep existing customers happy in the future. The rollout of Salesforce Lightning will help the company acquire new customers who weren't initially interested in the Salesforce product.