Salesforce's acquisition of Tableau unlocks new opportunities for customers
We've delivered thousands of projects with both Salesforce and Tableau. In the wake of their union, here's what you need to know.
Salesforce and Tableau shocked everyone on August 1, 2019, when they expeditiously closed their acquisition deal months before previously reported. Maybe they couldn't wait—and who could blame them given all the attention and excitement? The acquisition combines two leading companies in their fields, creating an even more powerful value proposition for customers.
It's the perfect marriage: Tableau is the #1 data visualization software and Salesforce is the #1 CRM tool. The two companies combine the ability to help people see and understand data with the ability to bring customers and companies together.
As a Salesforce partner since 2007 and a Tableau partner since 2013, Slalom is delighted to toast this extraordinary union and celebrate what it means for current and future customers.
1. CRM and analytics will no longer be two separate conversations.
The $15.7B purchase of Tableau is the most recent in a series of significant investments from Salesforce in analytics, AI, and integration companies over the last six years. Following acquisitions which later became the foundations for Einstein Analytics and Einstein Discovery AI, the addition of Tableau enhances Salesforce’s product stack to extend beyond CRM-centric analytic needs to broad, multipurpose capabilities.
Tableau offers visual storytelling, ease of use for data exploration, and the ability to easily integrate data from multiple data sources (both on premise and in the cloud). These market-leading capabilities unlock data outside of Salesforce, provide improved customer analytics and ultimately, better customer experiences.
"As an enterprise success platform, Salesforce is well-recognized as best in class," says Slalom's Salesforce leader Jantzen Bridges. "But in order for our clients to recognize best in class outcomes, they need accurate, integrated customer data and insights. Customer insights and data integrated and embedded in Salesforce, served up visually and in context to drive the next best action—that's a powerful combination."
In order for our clients to recognize best in class outcomes, they need accurate, integrated customer data and insights.
2. The utopia of Customer360 beyond CRM is no longer a pipe dream.
The Salesforce platform already brings together so many powerful tools that drive engagement with an understanding of your customers across sales, marketing, service and back-office support. Each previous acquisition has further extended the power through user-facing tools or powerful pieces of infrastructure, but this one is particularly exciting to us.
Tableau, particularly when embedded within Salesforce, is another step toward Salesforce’s utopic Customer360—one that extends far beyond CRM and all within Salesforce’s user-friendly interface. With Tableau, Salesforce can more easily present data that doesn’t reside within Salesforce but is relevant to that 360-degree customer view (think ERP data, non-transactional data, and data that is unlikely to reside in Salesforce because of its size, special security requirements, or other reasons).
Turning insights into action
With Tableau dashboards embedded in Salesforce, Slalom helped Elsevier empower 1,200 salespeople all over the world with timely insights to make better decisions every day.
3. Technology investments can be optimized with a partner that knows both platforms.
Slalom is a top five partner for both Salesforce and Tableau. We are a tenured Salesforce Platinum Consulting Partner with two back-to-back Innovation Awards, and we've been recognized as Tableau Partner of the Year five times. We've played an active role in helping both organizations realize their combined potential, and we've been integral in bringing them together on some of our most impactful projects:
- Enabling user adoption of a scalable and repeatable data retention model for a global information and analytics company to comply with GDPR
- Empowering a 800+ person sales team with account, opportunity, historical sales, and market sales data in one easy-to-consumer and visual format
- Helping a global leader in medical technology innovate a Performance Analyzer tool to bring real-time patient data and actionable insights to life
Our market-leading expertise in both Salesforce and Tableau means there's no learning curve. We can deliver high-quality, integrated solutions rapidly, with iterative and cumulative business value.
"Given our capabilities and partner standing across both platforms, Slalom has a perspective that Salesforce and Tableau don't yet have collectively," says Bridges. "We'll be shoulder to shoulder with Salesforce and Tableau on this journey, and we have that perspective and the experience to guide our customers."
In short, Slalom can help you and your teams access real-time insights to make data-driven decisions that are right for your business, right in the flow of your customer relationships. From strategy through execution, we can help you bring your customer data to life.
"We're already evangelizing the importance of having a modern culture of data and being extremely data-driven in all of your decisions," says Hilary Feier, Slalom's global data & analytics leader. "So many of those decisions are in that customer lifecycle and that customer journey. This just opens the door to have more of those conversations and pour gas on that."
4. Seattle will become Salesforce's official second headquarters.
Home to Slalom, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tableau, Seattle attracts top talent and creates opportunities for Salesforce and the region’s tech community to work more closely together.
While a powerful pairing, Salesforce and Tableau are still uniquely their own selves. The companies will operate separately—exactly like today—for approximately the next 12 weeks. We anticipate splashy public displays of affection from both companies at their global conferences in November, and we'd love to meet you there! Learn more about Slalom's presence at Dreamforce and Tableau Conference.
